THE  LIFE  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

SNIDER 


The  Collected  Writings 

of  Denton  J.  Snider 


BIOGRAPHY 

OF 

WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE 


The  play's  the  thing 
Wherein  I'll  catch  the  conscience  of  the  King. 

Hamlet. 

So  they  loved,  as  love  in  tivatn 
Had  the  essence  but  in  one; 
Two  distincts,  division  none: 
Number  there  in  love  was  slain. 
Hearts  remote  yet  not  assunder; 
Distance  and  no  space  was  seen.— 

The  Phoenix  and  the  Turtle 

It  tells  the  very  purpose  of  my  task 

To  make  you  see  the  soul's  artificer 

In  the  artificer's  own  soul  inscribed. 

His  many  works  are  just  one  work  at  last. 

Three  dozen  plays  a  single  play, 

Of  which  his  Life  is  the  right  argument. 

The  poet  is  himself  his  poem  true 

His  deepest  song  his  own  Biography. 

The  Shakespeariad. 


A    BIOGRAPHY 
OF 

V/iLLiAM    Shakespeare 

SET   FORTH    AS   HIS    LIFE   DRAMA 


BY 


DENTON     J.    SNIDER 


MDCCCCXXII 

The  WILLIAM     HARVEY    MINER    CO..    Inc. 

SAINT     LOUIS 


Copyright  1922  by 
DENTON  J.  SNIDER 


All  rights  reserved,  including  that  of  /)   "^    ' 

eluding  the  Scandinavian.  <-^      f       1 


translation  into  foreign  languages  5n-  ^     '         •A  'V 


Mound  City  Press,  Inc. 
St.  Lout-! 


To  mg  TOifr 


M170818 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Arcinive 

in  2007  witii  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


littp://www.archive.org/details/biograpliyofwilliOOsnidricln 


Shakespeare's  Life-Drama 


CONTENTS 

Introduction 9 

The  Stratford  Youth 22 

I.     The  Shakespeares 27 

II.     The  Ardens 40 

III.  Shakespeare  the  School  Boy 50 

IV.  The  Adolescent  Shakespeare 64 

V.     Shakespeare 's  Marriage 77 

VI.     Departure  from  Stratford 90 

VII.     The  Age 99 

VIII.     Drifting    108 

IX.     Anchored  115 

(7) 


8  CONTENTS 

First  Period. 

Apprenticeship   138 

A.  Collaboration 142 

I.     Early  Fellow  Dramatist 145 

II.     Henry  VI 152 

III.     Richard  III 188 

B.  Imitation — Experiment 206 

I.     The  Epical  Shakespeare 217 

II.     The  Lyrical  Shakespeare 237 

III.     The  Dramatic  Shakespeare 266 

C.  Origination 355 

I.     Comedies  375 

II.     Histories    389 

III.     Sonnets    426 

Second  Period. 

The  Master 's  Tragedies 444 

Third  Period. 

The  Tragi-Comedies 480 

Death  of  Shakespeare 517 


Shakespeare's  Life  Drama 


INTRODUCTION. 

One  of  the  most  familiar  passages  in  all  Shake- 
speare, memorized  by  every  declaiming  schoolboy, 
and  kept  ever  fresh  by  quotation  in  the  mind  of  the 
adult,  is  the  following: 

All  the  world's  a  stage. 
And  all  the  men  and  women  merely  playen, 
They  have  their  exits  and  their  entrances, 
And  one  man  in  his  time  plays  many  parts — 

What  gives  to  these  lines  such  enduring  vitality 
is  not  simply  the  fact  stated,  which  is  trite  enough, 
but  the  biographic  touch,  which  throbs  through 
them  and  makes  them  quiver  with  a  kind  of  per- 
sonal avowal.  Thus  the  poet  hints  his  general 
world-view,  undoubtedly  derived  from  his  par- 
ticular calling,  since  he  was  an  actor  as  well  as  a 
writer.    That  is,  he  conceives  here,  under  the  mask 


10  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

of  the  melancholy  Jaques,  human  life  as  a  whole 
to  be  a  drama,  and  hence  his  own  life  in  its  whole- 
ness to  be  rightly  a  Life-drama,  whose  acts  and 
scenes  he  as  a  man  has  been  and  still  is  playing. 

In  like  manner  we  hear  the  moody  Antonio  (in 
Merchant  of  Venice)  utter  his  brooding  sigh : 

I  hold  the  world  but  as  the  world,  Gratiano — 
A  stage  where  every  man  must  play  his  part 
And  mine  a  sad  one. 

To  a  tragic  intensity  deepens  the  guilty  self- 
accusing  Macbeth  after  his  deeds  of  blood : 

Out,  out,  brief  candle! 
Life's  but  a  walking  shadow,  a  poor  player 
That  struts  and  frets  his  hour  upon  the  stage, 
And  then  is  heard  no  more. 

In  a  goodly  number  of  similar  comparisons 
strown  throughout  his  works  Shakespeare  has 
emphasized  the  connection  between  his  vocation 
and  human  life  in  general.  Evidently  he  deems 
his  dramatic  productivity  as  the  supreme  expres- 
sion of  his  own  career.  His  life  in  its  entirety  is 
his  best  drama,  better  and  greater  than  any  single 
drama,  yea  than  all  of  them  put  together.  Hence 
his  biography,  if  we  follow  his  view  of  himself, 
must  be  treated  as  a  drama  in  conception  and 
movement,  though  not  necessarily  in  the  dramatic 
form  of  dialogue.  He  is  his  own  ''one  man" 
who  ''in  his  time  plays  many  parts" — not  only 
many  acts  and  scenes,  but  many  dramas,  thirty- 


INTRODUCTION  H 

six  of  them  (some  say  more),  which  nevertheless 
make  at  last  one  drama  of  life,  which  we,  follow- 
ing his  authority,  shall  call  Shakespeare's  Life- 
drama. 

Not  the  poet's  career,  then,  as  a  bead-roll  of 
separate  events  told  off  in  chronological  sequence; 
nor  do  we  here  propose  to  pile  together,  one  by 
one,  Shakespeare's  single  plays  into  an  aggregate 
more  or  less  jointless;  another  idea  and  method 
are  the  present  aim.  Not  Shakespeare's  discon- 
nected dramas,  but  the  one  grand  Shakespearian 
Pan-drama :  such  we  may  designate  our  theme ;  not 
Shakespeare's  thousandfold  characters,  but  his  one 
all-embracing  world-character  which  is  just  his 
colossal  personality;  can  we  catch  it,  and  make 
it  illumine  and  irradiate  the  vast  confusing  multi- 
plicity which  hides  it,  till  we  may  not  only 
see  it,  but  formulate  it  in  words  for  human 
apprehension?  Let  the  confession  be  made  that 
some  hope  of  the  sort  has  dictated  the  forthcoming 
book,  and  constitutes  its  best  right  to  be  written. 

Such  is,  in  general,  the  scope  of  what  we  here 
call  Shakespeare's  Life-drama.  For  a  larger, 
loftier  drama  than  any  or  all  his  dramas  is  his 
life  evolving  in  and  through  them,  and  creating 
them  as  its  own  highest  self-expression,  and  ful- 
filment. Though  the  ultimate  form  of  his  genius 
is  for  us  the  dramatic,  we  shall  often  find  him 
chafing  against  its  confining  bounds,  especially  in 
the  latter  part  of  his  career,  when  he,  feeling  if 
not  looking  backwards,  instinctively  throbbed  with 


12  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DRAMA 

his  life 's  total  deed,  and  more  than  once  threatened 
to  break  over  his  Art's  restraining  conditions. 

It  is  now  more  than  half  a  century  since  a  dis- 
tinguished, disgusted  commentator  on  a  play  of 
Shakespeare  (Professor  Craik)  whose  edition  we 
pored  over  in  our  boyhood,  lit  up  his  rather  dry 
page  with  a  smart  flash  of  splenetic  humor: 
**  After  all  the  commentatorship  and  criticism  of 
which  the  works  of  Shakespeare  have  been  the 
subject,  they  still  remain  to  be  studied  in  their 
totality  with  a  special  reference  to  himself.'' 
Such  was  the  Professor's  growl,  which  had  a 
lurking  tendency  to  turn  back  upon  himself,  for 
just  he  was  one  of  those  sinning  commentators. 
But  he  goes  on  with  his  polite  grumble :  ' '  The  man 
Shakespeare  as  read  in  his  works — Shakespeare 
as  there  revealed  not  only  in  his  genius  and  intel- 
lectual power,  but  in  his  character,  disposition, 
temper  ...  is  a  book  yet  to  be  written." 
So  spake  longingly,  even  if  rather  vaguely,  the 
somewhat  soured  but  very  worthy  exegete,  and 
his  damnatory  judgment  largely  holds  good  today 
in  spite  of  the  deluge  of  print  pouring  over  and 
about  Shakespeare  since  it  was  uttered. 

Nevertheless  we  chronicle  our  belief  that  the 
aspiration  to  know  Shakespeare  in  his  entirety  and 
as  an  entirety  has  been  emphatically  on  the  in- 
crease in  recent  years.  The  bolder-hearted  student 
no  longer  rests  content  with  the  beautiful  passages, 
with  the  unique  characters,  or  even  with  the  iso- 
lated dramas;  he  must  grasp  the  total  work  and 


INTBODUCTION  13 

with  it  the  total  man  creating  it  in  the  very  process 
of  creation.  He  has  come  to  feel  that  he  cannot 
know  truly  the  part  without  knowing  the  whole, 
that  any  part  of  Shakespeare  is  such  by  sharing  in 
and  helping  to  constitute  the  whole  Shakespeare. 
In  other  words,  the  supreme  object  to  be  attained  is 
the  man  himself,  the  very  personality  of  the 
sovereign  poet. 

What  is  this  personality?  Something  hard  to 
define,  since  it  is  itself  just  the  ultimate  definer  of 
all  things,  including  itself.  But  we  may  conceive 
the  dramas,  poems,  characters  of  Shakespeare  as 
effulgences  or  emanations  from  one  central  creative 
sun ;  these  his  works  are  converging  lines  or  radiant 
light-paths  leading  back  to  the  primal  source, 
which  is  his  personality.  Along  these  rays  of  light 
streaming  from  the  middle  luminary  we  are  to 
travel  back  through  vision  to  the  man  himself  at 
the  heart  of  all  his  labors,  which  have  radiated 
from  himself.  There  is  at  bottom  but  one  char- 
acter in  all  the  plays  of  Shakespeare,  and  that  is 
his  own,  himself,  or  his  Self.  If  we  can  catch  that 
and  commune  with  it  and  appropriate  it,  we  have 
attained  a  chief,  yea  the  one  greatest  blessing  of 
Shakespearian  study.  Thus  from  the  external 
manifestations  of  the  Genius  we  penetrate  to  his 
inner  creative  essence,  to  his  personality. 

Such  an  outlook  we  may  here  take  in  advance, 
recollecting,  however,  that  it  must  be  dim,  vague, 
undefined  at  the  beginning,  since  the  course  of  the 
entire  book  is  to  illumine  just  this  personality  and 


14,  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

to  bring  it  into  clearer  definition.  A  biography  of 
a  Great  Man  has  hardly  won  its  worth  unless  it 
introduces  us  into  his  soul's  own  process  as  re- 
vealed not  merely  in  his  life's  chronicled  events, 
but  also  in  the  genetic  unfolding  of  his  works. 

Having  thus  declared  the  prime  article  of  our 
biographic  faith,  we  must  next  get  ready  to  face 
its  denier,  who  upholds  the  view  that  Shakespeare 
himself  lies  completely  hidden,  unknown  and  un- 
knowable, within  and  behind  all  his  characters.  It 
is  the  sad  lot  of  us  poor  mortals  that  we  never  can 
get  really  acquainted  with  his  elusive  self-secreting 
personality.  Although  the  highest  authority  calls 
upon  us  to  know  even  God,  and  openly  promises  us 
that  beatitude,  still  we  can  never  know  William 
Shakespeare  the  man,  the  human  soul,  as  he  is  in 
himself.  That  this  forthcoming  book  of  ours 
refuses  to  accept  any  such  skeptical  view  of 
Shakespeare  (and  of  God  too,  for  that  matter), 
and  will  proceed  to  build  itself  upon  the  opposite 
plan,  may  here,  by  way  of  preface  and  perchance 
of  warning,  be  stoutly  affirmed. 

It  is,  however,  but  fair  to  the  reader  to  tell  him 
that  very  eminent  Shakespearians  there  are,  who 
with  equal  positiveness  maintain  the  unknowability 
of  the  man  Shakespeare.  That  is,  the  Shake- 
spearian self  in  its  distinctive  individuality  is  so 
completely  veiled  under  its  dramatic  mask  that 
its  workings  and  its  inner  evolution  cannot  be 
unriddled.  We  shall  cite  first  the  most  distin- 
guished   upholder    of    this    opinion,    Dr.    H.    H. 


INTBODUCTION  15 

Furness,  editor  of  that  monumental  work,  the  New 
Variorum  Shakespeare,  who  prints  in  the  preface 
to  his  edition  of  As  You  Like  It,  as  follows:  "I 
confess  to  absolute  scepticism  in  reference  to  the 
belief  that  in  these  dtamas  Shakespeare's  self  can 
be  discovered  (except  on  the  broadest  lines),  or 
that  either  his  outer  or  inner  life  is  to  any 
discoverable  degree  reflected  in  his  plays:  it  is  be- 
cause Shakespeare  is  not  there  that  the  characters 
are  so  perfect.  The  smallest  dash  of  the  author's 
self  would  mar  to  that  extent  the  truth  of  the 
character,  and  make  of  it  a  mask."  So  thinks  the 
learned  Doctor,  who  especially  denounces  "the 
error  to  infer  from  his  (Shakespeare's)  tragedies 
that  his  life  was  certainly  sad,  or  that  because  his 
life  was  sad  we  have  his  tragedies. ' '  Thus  Furness 
denies  the  validity  of  the  very  generally  accepted 
tragic  Period  of  the  poet 's  life.  Moreover  it  should 
be  set  down  for  our  right  appreciation  that  he,  our 
greatest  American  Editor,  seems  to  fathom  the 
ultimate  underlying  motive  of  the  grand  Shake- 
spearian achievement  in  this  astounding  wise :  ' '  I 
believe  that  Shakespeare  wrote  his  plays  to  fill  the 
theater  and  make  money  for  his  fellow-actors  and 
for  himself."  Certainly  so,  but  is  that  all  the 
answer  there  is  to  his  life's  greatness?  Still,  as  for 
me,  I  am  fain  to  believe  that  Furness  treats  him- 
self with  scant  justice  in  the  foregoing  manifesta- 
tion of  his  mentality ;  he  shows  himself  here  at  his 
worst,  for  he  has  now  and  then  bad  spells  in  spite 
of  his  prevailing  good-sense  and  good-humor. 


16  SRAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

A  second  eminent  Shakespearian  who  is  disin- 
clined to  see  Shakespeare  in  Shakespeare,  is  the 
Englishman  Sir  Sidney  Lee,  who  has  written  a 
large  Life  of  the  poet,  very  useful  for  its  collection 
of  materials  and  for  its  far-probing  historic  re- 
search. The  book  deserves  its  popular  vogue  on 
account  of  its  excellent  presentation  of  Shake- 
speare 's  body,  even  if  it  leaves  out  and  often  denies 
his  soul.  The  negation  of  Sir  Sidney  is  turned 
most  fiercely  and  long-windedly  against  the  Son- 
nets, whose  autobiographic  value  he  belittles  quite 
to  zero.  His  reading  overwhelms  us  by  its  Oceanic 
extent,  hardly  by  its  depth ;  very  valuable  becomes 
often  his  widely  gathered  information,  especially 
on  the  Sonnets,  if  we  draw  from  his  facts  not  his 
conclusions,  but  just  the  opposite. 

Such  is  the  re-actionary  view  concerning  Shake- 
speare's  biography  held  by  two  of  the  time's  fore- 
most expositors  of  the  poet.  Of  course  the  present 
book  will  insist  upon  its  right  and  duty  to  run 
counter  to  such  high  authority,  which  in  this  case 
fails,  as  we  think,  to  penetrate  to  the  essential  fact 
not  only  of  Shakespeare's  work,  but  of  all  Litera- 
ture, namely  the  personality  of  the  man  creating 
it,  and  therein  revealing  his  creative  self  at  its 
highest. 

Every  biographical  account  of  Shakespeare  ac- 
cepts these  three  main  divisions  of  his  external 
career :  his  youth  at  Stratford  where  he  was  bom, 
educated,  and  married ;  then  his  active  manhood  in 
London,  where  his  dramatic  and  literary  work  was 


INTBODUCTION  17 

done ;  finally  his  return  and  retirement  to  his  home 
at  Stratford,  where  he  passed  a  quiet  but  by  no 
means  idle  time  till  his  decease.  That  is,  Shake- 
speare's Life-drama,  regarded  as  embracing  all 
his  days,  falls  of  itself  into  three  separate  com- 
partments, which  external  division  has  its  internal 
correspondence  in  his  spirit's  evolution.  Accord- 
ingly, if  we  model  our  exposition  of  his  career 
after  the  prime  historic  facts  of  it,  we  shall  have 
to  consider  it  under  the  following  heads : 

(1)  The  youth  Shakespeare  at  Stratford; 

(2)  The  man  Shakespeare  at  London; 

(3)  Shakespeare's  Return  to  Stratford. 

These  three  divisions,  while  local  on  the  outside 
and  thus  external,  show  also  the  organism  of  his 
life's  deeds  and  events,  as  well  as  the  sweep  of  his 
soul's  history.  Shakespeare  was  not  a  very  old 
man  in  years  when  he  died,  still  he  had  practically 
completed  his  work,  he  had  fulfilled  the  round  of 
his  career.  It  is  quite  generally  agreed  that  he 
added  no  drama  or  poem  to  the  Shakespearian 
canon,  as  it  has  come  down  to  us,  during  the  last 
four  years  of  his  life.  But  that  he  was  intellectu- 
ally stagnant  we  cannot  believe.  At  least  he  was 
looking  backward,  and  could  hardly  be  rid  of  much 
deep  and  searching  reminiscence. 

The  most  casual  glance  cannot  help  observing 
that  here  is  a  round  or  cycle  of  places  which  starts 
with  Stratford,  moves  to  and  through  London,  and 


Ig  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

returns  to  Stratford.  In  this  outer  spatial  circuit 
is  included  at  the  same  time  the  rounded  sweep  of 
his  life  in  its  three  ordinary  stages — the  youth 
Shakespeare,  the  middle-aged  Shakespeare,  the  old- 
getting  Shakespeare.  Corresponding  to  these  phys- 
ical stages  of  the  man  are  his  psychical  ones,  which 
together  show  his  completed  human  fulfilment. 

Was  the  poet  aware  of  this  movement  of  himself, 
especially  of  its  inner  phase?  If  we  watch  him 
closely,  we  shall  often  catch  him  periodizing  the 
world,  including  in  his  sweep  events,  man,  and 
necessarily  himself.  Revolution  is  one  of  his  terms 
for  this  thought,  which  his  thinker  Hamlet  utters 
on  viewing  the  skulls  of  the  grave-yard :  '  *  Here 's 
fine  revolution,  an  we  had  the  trick  to  see  it." 
The  pleasure-loving  Antony  sees  the  round  of  him- 
self in  his  own  deepest  trait : 

The  present  pleasure, 
By  revolution  lowering,  does  become 
The  opposite  of  itself. 

More  than  once  the  poet  reflects  upon  the  tragic 
recoil  of  the  deed,  ''whose  bloody  instructions  re- 
turn to  plague  the  inventor. ' '  Also  in  his  comedies 
he  fails  not  to  give  a  humorous  tinge  to  the  comic 
revolution:  ''Thus  the  whirligig  of  time  brings 
in  his  revenges,"  as  the  clown  sums  up  the  action 
in  Twelfth  Night:  The  inspired  Maid  of  Orleans 
declares  in  prophetic  rapture:  ''With  Henry's 
death  the  English  circle  ends."  And  Edmund, 
Satan's  representative,  in  King  Lear,  pronounces 


INTBODUCTION  19 

the  pivotal  thought  and  word  in  a  dying  vision  of 
truth : 

Thou  hast  spoken  right,  'tis  true ; 
The  wheel  has  come  full  circle — I  am  here. 

Meditating  on  the  round  in  Nature  and  Mind  we 
often  find  him  in  the  Sonnets,  which  undoubtedly 
reveal  his  most  intimate  self- communings.  Thus 
he  glimpses  his  life's  epochs  (Sonnet  60)  : 

Nativity,  once  in  the  main  of  light, 
Crawls  to  maturity,  wherewith  being  crowned. 
Crooked  eclipses   'gainst  his  glory  fight. 
And  Time  that  gave  doth  now  his  gift  con- 
found. 

Here  plays  a  gleam  of  his  three  phases  of  life: 
Nativity  crawling  toward  maturity,  which  is  then 
crowned  with  his  brightest  works  (we  may  sup- 
pose) whose  glory,  however,  is  darkened  by 
''crooked  eclipses"  till  lowering  Time  finally  re- 
scinds his  supreme  endowment.  So  the  poet  visions 
his  life's  stages  quite  as  he  has  passed  through 
them,  in  outset,  in  sequence,  and  in  significance. 
Especially  circling  Time  he  shows  to  be  a  favorite 
theme  of  his  contemplation ;  through  all  his  works, 
but  more  particularly  through  his  Sonnets,  runs 
a  unique  philosophy  of  Time  and  signalizes  the 
deep  thinker-poet. 

Here  we  must  not  fail  to  take  notice  of  Shake- 
speare's defiant  attitude  toward  Time,  whose  in- 
sidious power  of  change  and  destruction  he  chal- 
lenges forthright  (No.  123) : 


20  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

No,  Time,  thou  shalt  not  boast  that  I  do 

change, 
Thy  pyramids  built  up  with  newer  might 
To  me  are  nothing  novel,  nothing  strange — 

He  proclaims  himself  the  same  Shakespeare,  the 
same  personality  (or  /  am)  in  all  his  works,  being 
more  primordial  and  enduring  than  the  Pyramids. 
And  now  we  are  to  hear  his  mighty  oath  in  defiance 
of  all  the  lying  appearances  and  negations  of  Time 
(Sonnet  123)  : 

Thy  registers  and  thee  I  both  defy, 
Not  wondering  at  the  present  nor  the  past ; 
For  thy  records  and  what  we  see,  do  lie. 
Made  more  or  less  by  thy  continual  haste. 
This  do  I  vow,  and  this  shall  ever  be, 
I  will  be  true,  despite  thy  scythe  and  thee. 

So  he  trumpets  his  dare  at  the  arch  Deceiver  and 
Destroyer,  the  old  hoary  Time-devil,  father  of  all 
illusion  and  decadence,  whereupon  he  takes  his  vow 
of  fealty  to  the  true  and  eternal  principle  of  his 
genius.  And  it  would  seem  proper  that  his  bio- 
grapher ought  to  repeat  the  same  vow  on  starting 
to  reproduce  in  writ  the  poet's  record  of  achieve- 
ment. 

Picking  up  the  three  fore-mentioned  divisions  of 
Shakespeare's  life,  which  seem  sharply  marked  off 
in  locality  as  if  for  the  reader's  first  pointer,  we 
may  set  them  down  here  in  advance  of  their  fuller 
exposition,  as  the  three  leading  parts  of  the  Poet 's 
entire  Life-drama; 


INTEODUCTION  21 

r 

I.  Prologue  at  Stratford. 

II.  Pan-drama  at  London. 

III.  Epilogue  at  Stratford. 

It  may  be  here  prefaced  that  the  middle  years  of 
Shakespeare's  activity,  embracing  his  supremely 
creative  time  at  London,  will  receive  our  pen's 
fullest  detail  and  emphasis  in  the  forthcoming  bio- 
graphic venture.  But  we  shall  also  spend  more 
than  usual  attention  upon  the  poet's  Life-prologue 
at  Stratford,  unfolding  as  completely  as  possible 
the  very  formative  and  no  means  scant  education 
of  the  youth  Shakespeare,  since  that  portion  of  his 
career  has  hitherto  been  quite  insufficiently  con- 
ceived and  handled,  as  we  judge  the  matter.  The 
third  part  above  scheduled,  namely  the  poet's  re- 
turn to  Stratford,  which  takes  place  in  his  advanc- 
ing age,  but  not  all  at  once,  is  to  receive  due  no- 
tice along  the  course  of  the  narrative,  but  cannot 
be  specially  expanded  in  this  book. 


The  Stratford  Youth. 
1564-1585. 

So  to  this  Life-drama  must  here  be  premised  a 
Life-prologue,  that  is,  a  prologue  which  has  been 
lived  and  achieved  in  the  deed,  and  which  is  now 
to  be  set  down  in  writ,  being  a  kind  of  foreshow, 
and  even  prophecy  of  the  poet's  approaching  Lon- 
don Pan-drama,  if  we  dare  unify  his  work  thus  to 
a  word.  Prologue  is  a  term  often  employed  by 
Shakespeare,  both  literally  and  metaphorically,  to 
designate  ^ '  the  harbinger  preceding  still  the  fates ' ' 
of  his  play,  and  so  named  the  ''Prologue  to  the 
omen  (event)  coming  on" — which  term  I  find  re- 
corded more  than  a  score  of  times  in  his  theatrical 
dictionary. 

Some  twenty-one  years,  according  to  our  esti- 
mate, make  up  the  duration  of  this  living  Prologue 
of  Shakespeare,  which  has  its  own  special  evolution 
(22) 


THE    8TBATF0BD    YOUTH  23 

from  the  man's  birth  till  his  majority.  In  order 
to  understand  the  forthcoming  greatness  of  the 
dramatist,  we  must  construe  or  rather  visualize  his 
youthful  career  at  Stratford.  We  have  to  raise 
to  light  and  put  into  order  the  material  there  won 
for  his  colossal  superstructure  at  London.  Every- 
where in  his  dramas  we  find  both  the  lore  and  the 
experience  which  he  could  have  gleaned  only  in 
his  small  rural  birth-town,  where  is  to  be  found 
the  communal  germ  of  his  entire  later  developed 
institutional  world,  or  of  the  grand  Shakespearian 
city  in  which  all  his  characters  live  and  move  about 
with  clash  or  concord. 

A  basic  and  pervasive  human  experience,  then, 
our  future  man-builder  acquires  in  these  prologu- 
ing  years  at  Stratford.  And  here  we  may  interject 
for  our  cognizant  reader  the  reflection  that  Shake- 
speare had  a  supreme  genius  for  experience,  not 
simply  for  the  getting  of  it,  but  for  the  using  of  it 
after  it  was  gotten.  What  he  saw,  felt,  and  suf- 
fered came  to  mean  more  and  deeper  in  his  case 
than  in  that  of  any  other  self-recording  mortal,  if 
his  be  the  supreme  writ,  as  is  often  stated.  Other 
minds  have  wrought  and  endured  profoundly  and 
mightily,  but  somehow  this  existence  of  ours  with 
its  joys  and  sorrows  has  left  its  trail  upon  his  soul 
so  significantly  and  so  creatively  that  his  self-ex- 
pression in  the  word  is  often  declared  the  highest 
yet  uttered  by  man.  And  has  not  the  recent  world- 
war  with  its  Anglo-Saxon  primacy  given  us  a  new 
commentary  on  Shakespeare?     For  somehow  we 


24  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

turn  to  him  more  than  ever  as  our  greatest  repre- 
sentative, who  is  still  to  ''show  the  very  age  and 
body  of  the  time  his  form  and  pressure.'' 

At  present,  however,  we  are  to  watch  him  as  a 
youth  and  catch  him,  when  we  can,  gathering  those 
personal  experiences  which  hereafter  he  is  to  forge 
into  characters  who  marvelously  begin  to  speak  and 
act  on  the  spot  in  their  own  right.  What  he  as  an 
individual  did  and  suffered,  became  at  his  creative 
touch  another  individual  doing  and  suffering,  not 
as  a  mortal  like  himself,  but  now  overmade  to  an 
immortal  and  a  dweller  in  the  eternal  city  once 
called  daringly  Shakespearopolis.  Then  he  was 
endowed  also  with  the  transcendent  power  of  utter- 
ing himself  at  the  top  of  human  speech,  which  like- 
wise has  the  magic  gift  of  never  dying.  Accord- 
ingly at  Stratford  we  shall  try  to  sleuth  him  get- 
ting those  elementary  and  often  crude  experiences, 
both  outer  and  inner,  which  he  is  hereafter  to 
transfigure  into  the  poetry  of  his  Life-drama. 

William  Shakespeare  the  Great  (for  there  were 
seemingly  dozens  of  other  little  William  Shake- 
speares  scattered  through  Warwickshire  and  the 
neighboring  shires  of  England)  was  born  April 
23rd,  1564,  which  date  of  his  nativity  is  not  exactly 
verifiable,  but  has  been  generally  accepted,  in  a 
spirit  of  universal  compromise  on  a  shadowy  point. 
The  parish  register  records  that  he  was  baptized 
April  26th,  1564,  a  rite  which  usually,  but  by  no 
means  always,  took  place  three  days  after  birth. 
The  Latinized  entry  for  that  day  still  runs  read- 


TBE    STBATFOED    YOUTH  25 

able:  Gulielmus,  filius  Joannis  Shakspere.  And 
another  little  slip  in  old  Time's  calculation  should 
not  be  wholly  forgotten  by  our  celebrants  of  Shake- 
speare's  birth-day.  The  Gregorian  calendar  was 
not  adopted  in  England  till  1752,  according  to 
which  we  would  have  to  add  ten  days  to  bring  the 
23rd  of  April  1564  (Old  Style)  to  its  right  date. 
Hence  Shakespeare's  birth  really,  according  to  the 
Sun's  faultless  chronometer,  must  have  happened 
on  the  3rd  of  May  1564. 

The  parents  of  this  William  Shakespeare  bore 
the  names  of  John  Shakespeare,  and  Mary  Arden 
(Shakespeare),  both  of  whom  came  of  families 
having  a  distinctive  character  and  genealogy, 
which  will  also  have  to  be  looked  into.  Their  home 
was  Stratford  on  the  Avon,  a  rather  diminutive 
town  of  Warwickshire  in  the  West  of  England, 
once  on  the  Welsh  frontier  and  still  not  so  very 
far  from  it— a  significant  fact  in  our  poet's  Life- 
drama.  Perhaps,  too,  he  had  a  drop  of  Welsh 
blood  in  his  own  veins,  despite  his  robust  Anglo- 
Saxonism.  Here  he  lived  till  he  was  twenty-one 
years  old — a  time  of  multiform  preparation  and 
presage,  hence  we  caption  it  a  Prologue,  overtur- 
ing  his  future  career.  Or  we  may  deem  it  the  im- 
plicit, the  potential,  the  germinal  stage  of  the  man's 
total  fulfilment. 

This  Stratford  in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century  is  reported  a  prosperous  market-town,  with 
a  number  of  small  local  industries  and  with  its 
own   civic  life  and   character,   having   its   prom- 


26  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

inent  parish  church  and  guild-hall,  and  also  high- 
school.  Evidently  a  town  with  its  own  distinctive 
psychology.  But  the  statement  must  be  added 
that  it  possessed  little  or  no  power  of  growth ;  two 
centuries  later  it  contained  about  the  same  number 
of  inhabitants  as  in  Shakespeare's  time,  hovering 
around  2000,  with  fluctuations  of  fortune  up  and 
down.  In  the  year  1590,  when  our  poet  was  living 
in  London,  the  officials  of  Stratford  complained 
that  their  town  had  fallen  much  into  decay  from 
the  loss  of  trade.  Probably  this  was  one  reason 
why  Shakespeare  left  it  as  soon  as  he  became  of 
age,  having  stored  up  much  life-stuff  for  his  com- 
ing Pan-drama. 

In  fact  such  a  community  had  a  very  important 
part  in  the  youthful  training  of  the  poet.  It  may 
well  be  deemed  one  of  the  representative  civic 
atoms  of  which  all  England  is  composed,  being  that 
primal  institutional  home  of  hers,  in  whose  bosom 
her  greatest  man  was  born  and  reared.  Its  influ- 
ence can  be  seen  streaming  through  all  his  works, 
imparting  to  them  its  local  color  as  well  as  its 
social  character,  along  with  traits  of  its  people. 
And  once  he  seems  to  pick  it  up  almost  bodily  and 
put  it  into  one  of  his  plays,  though  he  there  calls 
it  Windsor  in  a  kind  of  comic  disguise.  The  fact 
is  that  Shakespeare  communed  with  and  got  to 
know  the  soul  of  England  through  atomic  Strat- 
ford better  than  through  massive  London,  which, 
however,  is  to  be  the  scene  of  his  manhood's  self- 
realization. 


THE    SHAKESPEABES  27 

Another  fact  which  this  book  is  going  to  empha- 
size about  Stratford  is,  that  it  had  long  been  a 
border  settlement  of  Anglo-Saxondom  in  the  lat- 
ter's  advance  against  the  Celts  of  Wales  and 
Western  Britain.  Some  such  position  the  town  had 
once  occupied  for  hundreds  of  years,  and  the  mem- 
ory thereof  was  still  alive  and  at  work  in  the  poet's 
youth.  Thus  he  drank  of  the  spirit  of  that  strong 
persistent  drive  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  to  the  west- 
ward, which  in  his  time  was  just  beginning  to  push 
out  to  America,  and  which  had  already  settled 
Jamestown  in  Virginia,  and  which  has  since  his 
day  rolled  across  the  whole  Western  Continent 
from  Ocean  to  Ocean.  Many  towns  in  the  Missis- 
sippi Valley  have  a  frontier  history  which  is  not 
dissimilar  to  that  of  Stratford,  though  not  so  aged, 
and  which  still  lies  back  in  their  memory  and 
forms  a  unique  strand  of  their  character.  Thus 
they  may  well  find  in  Shakespeare  a  phase  of  their 
own  vivid  experience,  which  has  not  yet  become 
altogether  obliterated  even  in  England.  The  very 
name  of  the  poet's  family  has  in  it  a  memento  of 
border  warfare,  if  we  with  alert  eyes  glance  back 
into  its  history. 

I. 

The  Shakespeares. 

May  we  not  catch  already  a  note  of  defiance,  if 
not  a  downright  challenge  to  combat,  in  this  cap- 
tion which  designates  seemingly  a  brood  or  clan  of 


28  SHAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

spear-shakers,  who  reach  back  with  their  peculiar 
weapon  long  before  musket  and  gun  powder?  At 
any  rate  some  such  conception  must  have  been  in 
the  mind  of  Edmund  Spenser,  famous  Elizabethan 
cotemporary,  who,  wishing  to  compliment  his  sing- 
ing comrade  on  what  he  probably  knew  would 
tickle  family  pride,  selected  just  this  war-tuned 
name  for  his  praise,  and  hailed  the  poet 

"Whose  Muse  full  of  high  thought's  invention 
Doth  like  himself,  heroically  sound — 

which  allusion,  though  nameless,  is  supposed  to  be 
applicable  only  to  Shakespeare. 

Nor  should  we  fail  to  recall  ancient  Homer  who 
glorifies  with  a  like  epithet  his  Achaean  heroes  be- 
fore Troy,  as  they  on  the  bloody  bridge  of  war 
would  brandish  their  lances  against  the  foe.  And 
Hesiod,  Aeschylus,  and  others  sing  their  literal 
Greek  Shakespeare  (dorussoos)  not  as  poet,  how- 
ever, but  as  fore-fighter  with  spear  in  hand.  Well 
does  the  English  antiquarian  Camden  say  that 
people  often  derive  their  names  from  what  they 
wear  and  work  in.  Hence  probably  the  enormous 
vogue  of  our  English  name  Smith.  So  we  read 
that  in  ancient  English  documents  are  found  such 
appellatives  as  Longsword,  Broadspeare,  and  even 
Pope  Breakspeare  (Nicholas)  of  historic  fame,  as 
well  as  Henry  Shakelance  and  Hugh  Shakeshaft. 
So  we  may  listen  for  a  moment  to  these  ''heroical 
sounds"  echoing  over  and  about  our  poet's 
patronymic. 


THE    SHAKESPEABES  29 

The  name  Shakespeare,  usually  deemed  good 
Saxon  by  derivation,  is  said  to  be  found  even  in 
Kent,  perhaps  not  so  very  far  from  where  the 
savage  Hengst,  the  first  Teuton  invader  of  Britain, 
landed  and  began  his  march  toward  the  West, 
which  by  the  way  is  still  going  on.  It  seems  to 
occur  sporadically  throughout  England,  till  War- 
wickshire, which  faces  the  old  Welsh  borderland, 
is  reached,  where  the  Shakespeares  abound  exceed- 
ingly, most  of  them  without  any  known  kinship  to 
one  another.  They  appear  to  shoot  up  copiously 
and  quite  spontaneously  along  that  advancing 
Saxon  line,  which  must  have  been  at  first  largely 
composed  of  valorous  spear-shakers.  So  we  may 
revive  here  at  the  start  the  war-like  suggestion 
which  the  name  of  Shakespeare  called  up  in  the 
minds  of  his  cotemporaries.  Beside  Spenser  al- 
ready cited,  Ben  Jonson  has  celebrated  Shake- 
speare's well-filed  poetic  lines 

In  each  of  which  he  seems  to  shake  a  lance. 
As  brandished  at  the  eyes  of  ignorance — 

wherein  the  name  again  furnishes  the  threatening 
image  of  combat. 

Next  the  question  arises:  At  whom  was  shaken 
this  multitudinous  array  of  spears  appallingly 
reaching  far  backward  in  time,  as  well  as  now 
strung  along  the  western  English  boundary?  Only 
one  answer  possible:  against  the  Celt,  specially  of 
the  Welsh  frontier.  And  while  we  are  dallying 
over  etymologies  we  may  take  the  time  to  add  that 


30  SB AKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

the  very  word  Welsh  is  still  a  German-Saxon  term 
signifying  a  foreigner,  one  not  of  our  stock  or  race, 
and  was  doubtless  flavored  originally  with  a  spice 
of  soldierly  contempt.  In  fact  the  Teuton  of  to- 
day who  knows  nothing  of  Cambrian  Wales,  still 
uses  the  same  word  (Walsch)  for  non-German 
neighboring  peoples,  such  as  the  Italian,  the  Slav, 
even  the  Frenchman.  And  their  to  him  strange 
speech  he  will  scorn  as  a  kind  of  Welsh  (Kauder- 
walsch).  On  the  other  hand  an  indignant  Celt 
(Mackay)  has  taken  his  etymological  revenge  by 
turning  the  name  Shakespeare  into  Celtic,  deriving 
it  from  two  words  meaning  Longshanks,  possible 
eponym  for  a  good  runner,  perchance  fleeing  from 
his  Celtic  foes. 

It  has  always  seemed  rather  wonderful  to  us 
that  English  writers  should  claim  that  their  great 
poet  was  born  in  the  heart  of  England,  with  the 
inference  that  on  this  account  he  knows  all  about 
the  English  heart,  whereof  springs  his  charac- 
teristic genius.  But  the  map  and  especially  history 
show  that  Stratford  on  the  Avon  lies  not  so  very 
far  from  the  dividing  line  between  Wales  and 
England,  ancient  racial  foes,  and  not  yet  fully 
reconciled,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  recent  Welsh 
patriotic  Renaissance.  Stratford  was  still  some- 
what of  a  border  town  in  Shakespeare's  time,  and 
he  reveals  in  numerous  passages  of  his  dramas 
traces  of  the  old  race  feeling  which  he  must  have 
caught  and  brought  from  his  home-town  and  its 
surroundings.     In  fact,   Stratford  itself,  we  are 


THE    SHAKESPEAEES  31 

told,  had  a  considerable  Welsh  population,  and 
many  of  mixed  blood,  since  along  that  border  the 
two  peoples  had  been  commingling  for  long  cen- 
turies. Some  have  spied  a  Celtic  blood  corpuscle 
in  Shakespeare  himself,  trickling  into  his  heart  and 
even  into  his  imagination  from  some  remote  an- 
cestor, possibly  already  from  his  grandmother. 
Generally  the  barbarous  invader  would  slay  or 
drive  off  the  native  man,  and  marry  the  native 
woman — a  process  which  had  been  for  generations 
going  on  around  Stratford. 

There  is  no  doubt,  however,  that  Shakespeare 
sided  in  sympathy  with  the  Saxons,  one  of  whom 
he  deemed  himself,  as  we  may  infer  from  the  num- 
ber of  portraits  he  has  painted  of  Welshmen, 
mostly  with  a  dash  of  grotesque  if  not  contemptu- 
ous humor.  See  for  instance  Sir  Hugh  Evans  in 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  and  Fluellen  in  Henry  V. 
But  for  a  type  of  the  warlike  spirit  along  that 
borderland,  we  may  take  the  poet's  description  of 
the  furious  duel  between  English  Mortimer  and 
Welsh  Glendower  on  the  shore  of  the  Severn, 
which  river  was  long  regarded  as  a  kind  of  divid- 
ing line  between  Celt  and  Saxon,  and  flowed  not  so 
very  far  away  from  Stratford.  But  just  behold 
our  Mortimer,  now  the  Saxon  hero : 

On  gentle  Severn's  sedgy  bank 
In  single  opposition,  hand  to  hand, 
He  did  confound  the  best  part  of  an  hour 
In  changing  hardiment  with  great  Glendower. 


32  8HAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Three    times    they    breathed,    and    three 

times  did  they  drink 
Upon  agreement  of  swift  Severn's  flood 
Blood-stained    with    these    valiant    com- 
batants. 

Here  we  may  well  feel  the  Shakespearian  throb  of 
the  old  conflict  not  far  from  the  poet's  fire-side, 
where  he  must  have  often  heard  the  story  told 
with  an  epic  fervor,  which  he  here  reproduces  (in 
First  Henry  IV).  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
typical  fact  must  not  be  neglected  that  just  this 
fighting  English  Mortimer,  his  people's  hero,  mar- 
ries his  desperate  Welsh  foe's  daughter,  though 
she  cannot  talk  her  husband's  language  to  do  the 
courtship.  In  fact  this  drama  (The  First 
Henry  IV)  overflows  with  the  warlike  enthusiasm 
of  the  struggle  on  the  English  and  Welsh  frontier, 
being  the  poet's  own  neighborhood  laden  with  all 
the  vivid  memories  of  his  youth.  One  reason  why 
the  Second  Henry  IV  droops  in  its  thrill  is  that 
the  scene  moves  North  away  from  Shakespeare's 
juvenile  range  around  Stratford. 

So  much  meaning  we  have  to  attach  to  our  poet 's 
name  derived  from  the  advancing  spear-shakers 
along  the  border — Saxons  labeling  themselves 
after  their  chief  business.  Says  Sir  Sidney  Lee, 
good  for  statistics,  whatever  we  may  think  of  his 
esthetics,  as  he  epitomizes  the  foregoing  facts: 
*'In  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  the 
surname    (Shakespeare)    is   found   far   more   fre- 


THE    SHAEESPEAEES  33 

quently    in    Warwickshire    than    anywhere    else 
.     And  among  them  all  William  was  a  com- 
mon Christian  name." 

Another  indication  that  Shakespeare  took  a  pro- 
nounced public  pride  in  his  spear-shaking  ancestry, 
is  the  fact  that  the  draft  of  the  coat-of-arms  for  his 
father  (which  he  applied  for  in  1596)  contains  as 
its  most  distinctive  mark  ''a  spear  gold  steeled," 
doubtless  emblematic  of  his  name  and  family. 
Moreover  in  said  draft  it  is  declared  as  a  ground 
for  such  honor  that  the  applicant's  ancestors 
''were  for  their  valiant  and  faithful  service  ad- 
•vanced  and  rewarded  by  the  most  prudent  prince 
King  Henry  the  Seventh."  This  attempt  to  ob- 
tain heraldic  glory  cost  the  poet  a  good  deal  of 
time  and  trouble,  whereof  the  account  can  be  found 
in  the  antiquarians  by  any  reader  who  wants  such 
details.  Here  we  would  merely  note  that  our 
Spear-shaker  employs  the  weapon  of  his  name 
as  the  blazon  of  his  title  to  the  rank  of  a  gentleman. 

And  while  the  etymological  fit  is  on,  we  may  as 
well  give  to  it  a  little  more  vent  by  saying  that 
this  common  cognomen  William  has  also  a  warlike 
strain  in  its  origin,  being  ancient  Teutonic  Wille- 
helm,  whose  two  constituent  words  are  will  and 
helmet,  both  of  which  have  never  lapsed  in  modern 
English  or  in  modern  German.  Thus  we  may  feel 
from  afar  the  original  fondness  of  those  old  Saxon 
spear-shaking  borderers  for  naming  their  boys 
William,  that  is,  will-helmeted,  or  pluck-protected. 
So  the  live  reader  of  William  Shakespeare  may  feel 


34  SnAEESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

a  bright  streak  of  satisfaction  in  tracing  the  gene- 
alogy even  of  the  poet's  name,  hinting  as  it  does 
his  prime  elemental  energy  poured  forth  not  now 
in  war  but  in  writ,  and  after  its  way  heroizing  him 
as  the  Will-helmeted  Spear-shaker.  No  little  of 
this  original  ancestral  strength  and  clash  he 
mightily  exploits  in  his  dramas,  specially  in  his 
tragedies. 

That  Shakespeare  was  attached  to  his  name  and 
fondled  it  poetically  may  be  seen  in  several  of  his 
word-teasing  sonnets  (135-136)  in  which  he  caresses 
his  abbreviation  Will,  and  dances  it  very  willfully 
up  and  down  through  a  number  of  meanings.  In- 
deed he  puns  with  it  a  kind  of  sportive  hide-and- 
seek,  which  often  leaves  the  reader  uncertainly 
groping  through  a  labyrinthine  word-play  between 
the  proper  name  Will  and  the  common  noun  will, 
as  for  instance  in  the  overture 

Whoever  hath  her  wish,  thou  hast  thy  Will 
And  Will  to  boot,  and  Will  in  overplus : 
Wilt  thou  whose  will  is  large  and  spacious 
Not  once  vouchsafe  to  hide  my  will  in  thine? 

Strangely  he  celebrates  his  Dark  Lady  as  having 
a  greater  Will  than  his  own,  as  ''being  rich  in 
Will"  to  which  he  is  the  submissive  thrall.  And 
his  final  supplication  (136)  turns  on  his  dear 
name : 

Make  but  my  name  thy  love,  and  love  that  still 
And  then  thou  lov'st  me,  for  my  name  is  Will. 


THE    SHAKESPEABES  35 

Nor  should  we  forget  to  remark  that  these  fore- 
mentioned  numerous  William  Shakespeares  in  and 
around  Stratford  and  its  borderland  were  some- 
times mistaken  one  for  the  other,  thus  producing 
confusion  in  business  and  in  intercourse  through 
similarity  of  names.  In  fact  such  instances  of 
confusion  are  of  record.  Hence  it  is  not  unlikely 
that  our  young  Stratforder,  William  Shakespeare 
in  his  own  person,  may  have  experienced  more 
than  one  case  of  mistaken  identity  somewhat 
similar  to  that  of  the  two  Antipholuses  or  of  the 
two  Dromios  in  Comedy  of  Errors,  often  supposed 
to  be  his  first  play.  So  this  comedy,  deemed  im- 
probable by  Coleridge,  can  well  have  been  directly 
transcribed,  at  least  in  part,  from  the  youth 's  daily 
book  of  life. 

Shakespeare  repeatedly  pokes  his  good-natured 
jibes  at  the  Welshman  who  is  talking  English ;  thus 
the  dramatist  we  overhear  portraying  scenes  taken 
from  the  streets  of  Stratford  or  from  its  school, 
which  once  had  a  Welsh  master.  But  by  way  of 
reparation,  perhaps  unconscious,  he  makes  Welsh 
Owen  Glendower  a  poet,  and  a  Shakespearian  poet 
at  that,  though  with  a  decided  Welsh  mythical 
streak  mingled  with  ridiculous  superstitions.  Per- 
haps we  here  may  catch  Shakespeare  reproducing 
in  Glendower  the  weird  Celtic  imagination,  whose 
strains  the  youth  must  have  heard  often  at  Strat- 
ford, in  contrast  with  English  Hotspur,  who  is 
also  a  poet  in  speech  and  conception,  though  he 
denies  it  and  scoffs  at  such  a  talent.     But  Glen- 


36  SHAKESPE ABB'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

dower  takes  as  much  pride  in  his  poetic  as  in  his 
martial  prowess: 

I  framed  to  the  harp 
Many  an  English  ditty  lovely  well, 
And  gave  the  tongue  a  helpful  ornament — 
A  virtue  that  was  never  seen  in  you. 

So  Shakespeare  sets  up  a  little  Welsh-English 
eisteddfod  or  tournament  of  fantasy  between  the 
two  imaginative  warriors,  the  Welshman  and  the 
Englishman,  as  if  preluding  the  tug  of  battle. 

Still  Shakespeare  was  careful  not  to  carry  his 
fun  too  far  there  in  London,  since  suspicious 
Queen  Elizabeth  was  herself  of  Welsh  blood. 
Then,  too,  her  dynasty  bore  a  Welsh  name,  being 
derived  from  Owen  Tudor,  husband  or  lover  (for 
the  relation  seems  somewhat  doubtful)  of  Queen 
Catherine,  widow  of  Henry  V,  our  poet's  chief 
historical  hero  among  English  Kings,  who  also  de- 
clares in  the  play  named  after  him :  ' '  I  am  Welsh, 
good  countryman."  Elizabeth  would  naturally 
not  want  too  much  said  about  the  origin  of  her 
House  or  of  herself.  Less  than  a  century  before 
the  birth  of  Shakespeare,  Henry  VII  ends  the 
wars  of  the  Roses  by  his  victory  over  Richard  III 
at  Bosworth  Field  (1485),  and  enthrones  the 
House  of  Tudor,  which  lasts  till  the  death  of 
Queen  Elizabeth  (1603).  At  this  time,  however, 
the  poet  had  transcended  the  period  of  his  writing 
English  Histories,  and  was  voicing  his  tumultuous 
heart  out  of  its  tragic  depths.     Moreover,  during 


TEE    SHAKESPEABES  37 

the  present  Tudor  era,  the  border  feud  was  more 
quiescent,  and  Wales  could  glorify  itself  peacefully 
over  England,  to  which  it  now  furnished  the 
sovereign. 

In  these  more  tranquil  years  intercourse  between 
the  two  peoples  would  improve,  and  we  can 
imagine  the  young  inquisitive  Shakespeare  leaving 
his  native  valley  for  a  trip  over  the  border,  cross- 
ing the  Severn  and  the  Wye,  scene  of  many  former 
spear-shakings  like  that  between  Mortimer  and 
Glendower.  Thence  he  would  penetrate  the  lonely 
Welsh  mountains  where  he  might  behold  the  scen- 
ery of  Cymheline  and  inspect  the  cave  of  Belarius. 
Why  should  he  not  proceed  to  Milford  Haven^ 
then  the  chief  seaport  of  Wales,  with  its  various 
historic  associations?  For  it  is  our  belief  that  he 
needs  and  seeks,  first  of  all  for  his  creativity,  the 
sense-basis  of  the  thing  immediately  seen  and  ex- 
perienced, which  he  then  transmutes  into  poetry. 

Here  we  are  led  to  ruminate  the  wondering 
question:  Did  the  youth  Shakespeare  in  his 
neighborhood  rambles  ever  visit  Caerleon  on  the 
Usk,  the  famous  Welsh  home  of  Arthur  and  the 
Knights  of  the  Round  Table?  This  brings  up  one 
striking  omission  or  silence  in  Shakespeare 's  works, 
so  striking  that  it  must  mean  intentional  avoidance 
if  not  downright  repugnance.  He  could  not  help 
often  hearing,  during  his  boyhood  along  the  border, 
about  the  Arthurian  legend,  the  most  creative  and 
the  most  lasting  product  of  the  Welsh,  possibly  of 
the  whole  Celtic  mind.  But  not  one  of  his  acknowl- 


38  SHAKESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

edged  plays  or  poems  is  devoted  to  any  hero  of  the 
Round  Table,  whose  tale  is  supposed  to  have  been 
located  in  Welsh  Caerleon,  a  short  journey  from 
Stratford.  Shakespeare,  so  deeply  imbued  with 
the  world's  mythical  spirit  in  its  Anglo-Saxon  and 
Greco-Roman  manifestations,  seems  to  shun  the 
Celtic  Mythus,  which  spread  over  England,  and 
indeed  over  Europe,  taking  lodgment  in  far-off 
Teutonic  and  Mediterranean  lands,  and  reproduc- 
ing itself  in  many  forms  of  poetry  with  little  inter^ 
ruption  down  time,  for  it  is  famously  alive  to-day 
in  English  Tennyson  and  in  German  Wagner,  as 
it  was  already  long  ago  in  Italian  Dante,  not  to 
speak  of  old  Gottfried  von  Strassburg.  Only  a 
few  brief  allusions — some  of  these  contemptuous 
and  others  suspected — does  the  greatest  British 
poet  suffer  himself  to  utter  in  reference  to  the 
greatest,  most  productive  British  legend. 

This  fact  has  long  since  seemed  to  us  very  sig- 
nificant. Shakespeare,  lover  of  folk-lore  and  one 
of  its  supreme  poetizers,  turns  away  from  the 
grandest  manifestation  of  it  just  in  his  own  neigh- 
borhood, where  its  glory  once  rose  in  full  splendor, 
and  its  famous  feats  of  war  and  love  were  certainly 
familiar  to  him  from  childhood.  How  can  this  be 
accounted  for?  In  our  judgment  we  have  here  an 
indication  of  that  deep-seated  racial  antipathy 
which  necessarily  grew  up  along  the  fighting  bor- 
derland between  Welshman  and  Englishman,  or 
more  generally  stated,  between  Celt  and  Saxon.  Do 
we  not  see  it  still  to-day  furiously  at  work  in  Ire- 


TEE  8EAKESPEABE8  39 

land,  with  echoes  across  the  Ocean  through  all 
America?  So  the  new  spear-shaker  Shakespeare 
shakes  his  intellectual  spear  at  the  old  Celtic 
fortress  over  the  Severn,  where  was  fabled  the 
Table  Round.  And  when  the  bristling  forays  are 
no  longer  permitted,  he  fires  his  sneer  at  *Hhe 
dreamer  Merlin  and  his  prophecies. ' '  Or  take  that 
unique  consolation  of  the  tavern's  hostess  over  the 
passing  of  Falstaff :  ' '  Nay,  sure,  he 's  not  in  Hell ; 
he's  in  Arthur's  bosom,  if  ever  man  went  to 
Arthur 's  bosom. ' '  I  fancy  that  young  Shakespeare 
first  heard  this  expression  in  a  border  pothouse, 
whose  Welsh  barmaid  naturally  substituted  the 
Cymric  hero  Arthur  for  the  Hebrew  Father 
Abraham  (Henry  V,  113). 

The  Spear-shakers,  or  the  Shakespeares,  when 
the  long  border  conflict  had  grown  flaccid,  lapsed 
into  peaceful  plebeian  tillers  of  the  soil,  tradesmen, 
and  artisans.  John  Shakespeare,  the  poet's  father, 
was  born  at  Snitterfleld  (very  Teutonic  word 
still),  a  village  some  miles  north  of  Stratford, 
where  he  was  a  farmer;  but  about  1551  he  moved 
to  Stratford,  then  a  thriving  market-town  where 
he  engaged  in  business  with  success  at  first,  but 
after  some  years  a  slow  adversity  overtook  him 
and  ground  him  finally  to  very  dust  of  poverty. 
Prom  this  descent  into  indigence  he  seems  never 
to  have  recovered,  though  he  rose  to  be  in  title  an 
English  gentleman  blazoned  with  a  coat-of-arms, 
through  his  illustrious  son. 

But  John  Shakespeare's  supreme  deed,  done  at 


40  SHAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

the  height  of  his  prosperity  in  1557,  was  his  win- 
ning the  heart  and  hand  of  Mary  Arden,  daughter 
of  a  well-to-do  land-owner  of  Wilmcote,  three  miles 
from  Stratford,  to  whom  his  father  was  a  tenant. 
This  woman  was  her  husband's  superior  in  station 
and  wealth,  and  doubtless  also  in  native  talent, 
good-breeding,  and  education.  Thus  dawns  upon 
history  this  new  Mary,  mother  of  William  Shake- 
speare, the  most  important  personality  in  his  early 
training,  and  without  question  the  right  parent  of 
his  genius. 

11. 

The  Ardens. 

After  a  general  way  it  may  be  affirmed  that  the 
Ardens  were  the  more  aristocratic  of  blood  and 
breeding,  while  the  Shakespeares  were  the  more 
plebeian.  In  the  name  of  Arden  there  lurks  a  sug- 
gestion of  Norman  French  origin,  since  it  brings 
to  mind  the  region  of  Ardennes  in  France  and 
also  in  French  Belgium.  Then  there  was  the 
actual  Forest  of  Arden,  a  woody  tract  of  Warwick- 
shire which  extended  to  the  Avon,  and  lay  not  far 
from  Stratford.  But  best  known  is  the  idyllic, 
quite  Utopian  Forest  of  Arden,  with  its  bright 
heroine  Rosalind  in  As  You  Like  It.  Let  us  note, 
however,  that  John  Shakespeare,  son  of  an  humble 
farmer,  won  the  hand  of  his  overlord's  daughter, 
Mary  Arden,  who  had  been  reared  in  comfort  for 
that  time,  if  not  in  luxury.     She  doubtless  had 


TRE  ABDENS  41 

some  education,  at  least  that  of  the  better  class  of 
young  women  of  her  social  rank.  Existing  docu- 
ments show  that  she  made  her  mark  instead  of 
signing  her  name;  but  that  need  not  imply  that 
she  was  unable  to  write  her  signature,  so  anti- 
quarians tell  us.  People  who  well  knew  how  to 
subscribe  their  autograph,  often  simply  put  their 
mark  on  legal  instruments.  John  Shakespeare,  the 
father,  a  business  man  and  keeper  of  accounts,  is 
doubtless  an  example  of  the  same  fact.  He  could 
write,  though  we  meet  with  his  letterless  sign. 

Moreover,  Mary  Arden  brought  to  her  husband 
considerable  property.  At  her  father's  death  in 
1556,  and  hence  a  year  before  her  marriage,  she 
fell  heir  to  a  handsome  sum  of  ready  money  and* 
a  good  piece  of  land  with  farm-house  called 
Asbies.  Besides  this  portion  she  had  previously 
acquired  an  interest  in  two  homesteads  with  ad- 
joining acres  at  Snitterfield.  Thus  she  lifted  her 
husband  to  the  rank  of  an  English  landowner.  It 
would  seem  that  she,  the  youngest  of  seven  daugh- 
ters, was  the  favorite  of  her  father,  who  probably 
had  not  permitted  her  to  grow  up  unlettered,  as  he 
made  her  one  of  his  executors.  Surely  rustic  John 
Shakespeare  was  in  luck  when  he  won  to  marriage 
well-dowered  Mary  Arden,  who  must  have  felt  love 
to  wed  the  man  beneath  her  in  wealth,  blood,  social 
position,  and  doubtless  in  education,  not  to  speak 
of  talent.  On  the  whole  a  rather  unconventional 
un-English  act  it  was,  which  the  poet  Shakespeare 
has  often  repeated  in  his  plays.    This  disparity  be- 


42  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DRAMA 

tween  his  two  parents  the  keen-witted  boy  must 
have  noticed  long  before  he  quit  home.  In  fact 
it  became  more  and  more  deeply  stamped  upon 
his  mind,  and  therewith  doubtless  upon  his  feel- 
ings, as  he  marked  his  father's  continual  sub- 
sidence and  his  mother's  devotion  and  steadfast- 
ness. Will  this  impressive  home-felt  experience  in 
regard  to  the  man  and  the  woman  nearest  to  his 
head  and  heart,  show  itself  hereafter  when  the 
poet  constructs  his  gallery  of  human  characters 
made  up  of  the  two  sexes?  We  shall  often  notice 
that  what  he  has  personally  experienced  is  the 
chief  original  content  which  he  pours  into  his  ac- 
quired poetic  forms,  dramatic  or  lyric. 

Accordingly  it  may  be  here  foresaid  that  the  son 
William  Shakespeare,  in  a  number  of  his  portraits 
has  made  his  women-lovers  the  heroines  of  the  ro- 
mance, while  his  men-lovers  are  rather  an  inferior 
set.  Compare  Portia  with  her  Bassanio,  Rosalind 
with  her  Orlando,  Helena  with  her  Bertram,  even 
Juliet  with  her  Romeo.  To  the  woman  he  gives 
the  will,  aye  the  will  to  love,  and  to  take  the  con- 
sequences. I  believe  that  the  youth  Shakespeare 
saw  the  counterpart  of  this  distinction  between  the 
woman  and  the  man  in  his  o^ti  home  for  many 
years;  the  woman  was  the  better  man  of  the  two, 
and  especially  the  stronger  in  love.  Besides,  John 
Shakespeare  not  long  after  his  marriage  began  to 
droop  in  business,  and  for  years  he  continued  to 
be  a  sinking  man,  till  he  lost  not  only  his  own  but 
his  wife's  property,  which  she  apparently  surren- 


THE   AKDENS  43 

dered  to  stem  his  downward  fortune.  The  boy 
must  have  seen  and  felt  this  decline  of  his  father 
during  his  entire  growth  to  manhood.  Hence  it 
lay  in  him  to  stamp  upon  many  a  play  that  the 
woman  has  more  character  than  the  man,  that  the 
female  is  made  of  better  stuff  than  the  male.  Such 
was  his  daily  experience  in  his  own  household. 

Pointedly  the  thought  emerges  from  the  circum- 
stances that  Mary  Arden  Shakespeare  was  the 
parent  of  her  son's  genius,  and  not  only  that  but 
also  she  was  the  one  who  fostered  its  aspiration, 
supported  its  schooling,  and  helped  it  to  its  oppor- 
tunities. She  had  six  sisters,  and  they  also  would 
have  their  influence  on  the  bright  boy,  when  he 
would  visit  their  homes.  Manifestly  the  aristocratic 
family  of  the  Ardens  with  its  traditions,  with  its 
long  genealogy,  with  its  prides  and  prejudices, 
which  he  failed  not  to  hear  from  these  six  aunts, 
especially  from  the  two  unmarried  ones,  was  dom- 
inant in  the  boyhood  of  the  poet,  while  the  some 
what  plebeian  Shakespeares  would  tend  to  fall  into 
the  background.  For  the  old  maid,  as  we  may  still 
hear  her  call  herself  in  honor,  banquets  festively 
from  the  genealogical  table.  More  than  likely  the 
Arden  women  had  always  deemed  sister  Mary's 
marriage  as  a  mesalliance.  Thus  environed  and 
trained,  the  original  Shakespeare  of  the  people  gets 
for  life  an  aristocratic  tinge,  often  traceable  in  his 
work,  and  sometimes  made  a  subject  of  democratic 
reproach  to  his  book. 

Another  note  must  be  penned  in  this  connection. 


44  SHAKESPEABE*S   LIFE-DBAMA 

Robert  Arden,  father  of  Mary,  shows  by  the  word- 
ing of  his  will  drawn  in  November  1556  that  he, 
if  not  a  Catholic,  was  at  least  Catholicising.  A 
different  branch  of  the  Arden  family  furnished  its 
martyr  to  Elizabethan  persecution  of  the  old  faith 
in  1583.  From  these  and  other  facts  the  question 
has  been  mooted  whether  Shakespeare's  mother 
was  secretly  a  Catholic,  and  perchance  her  son  as 
well.  She  seems  to  have  adjusted  herself  to  the 
church  of  her  husband  in  her  marriage,  and  prob- 
ably kept  shy  of  breaking  with  the  established  re- 
ligion, which  was  Henry  the  Eighth's  Protest- 
antism. Shakespeare  doubtless  felt  somewhat  of 
these  religious  counter  currents  in  his  family,  and 
became  careful  and  tolerant  toward  both  sides,  so 
his  home-life  probably  showed  a  compromise  of  si- 
lence on  the  great  church-dispute  of  the  age,  which 
grew  to  be  his  mind 's  habit.  Then  his  nature  was 
not  that  of  a  reformer  or  religious  martyr,  though 
he  in  his  way  partook  of  the  deepest  spiritual  move- 
ment of  his  time,  and  felt  as  his  own  its  collision, 
as  we  may  note  in  his  Hamlet.  He  could,  however, 
have  hardly  been  a  convinced  Catholic,  if  his  char- 
acters expressed  his  honest  conviction  as  regards 
the  Papacy  in  King  John,  and  as  regards  monasti- 
cism  in  Measure  for  Measure.  Consider  also  the 
drift  of  his  evident  familiarity  with  the  Genevan 
Protestant  version  of  the  Bible.  Shakespeare's  re- 
ligion has  been  much  discussed  in  these  recent 
years,  and  he  has  been  claimed  to  be  both  a  Ro- 
manist  and   a  Puritan,   as  well   as   the   Colossus 


THE    ABDENS  45 

straddling  both  the  religious  extremes  of  his  time. 
But  an  extremist  he  never  was  and  could  not  be, 
except  in  poetry.;  hostile  to  neither  side,  yet  shar- 
ing in  both,  he  lived  the  whole  and  then  portrayed 
it  wholly. 

The  poet's  most  distinctive  monument  to  his 
mother  is  the  character  of  Volumnia  in  his  Corio- 
lanus,  the  aristocratic  woman  with  her  class  preju- 
dice and  strong  will,  and  especially  proud  of  her 
illustrious  son  who  has  achieved  such  lofty 
eminence.  This  play  was  written  about  the  time 
of  her  death  in  1608,  perhaps  not  long  afterward, 
under  the  spur  of  affectionate  retrospect.  It  is 
doubtful  if  he  ever  paid  any  such  tribute  in  his 
works  to  his  father,  who  died  in  1603.  Shakespeare 
has  limned  quite  a  list  of  mothers  through  his 
dramas,  both  good  and  bad,  in  a  variety  of  shad- 
ings. Unforgettable  is  the  passionate  motherhood 
of  Constance  in  King  John,  yet  subtly  commingled 
with  her  own  political  ambition ;  on  the  other  hand 
Hermione,  though  also  a  queen,  is  wholly  mother 
and  wife.  Wicked  maternity  may  be  graded  from 
Hamlet's  mother  down  through  Cloten's  to 
Sycorax,  'Hhe  damned  witch"  whose  offspring 
was  Caliban.  But  the  poet,  has  excluded  the 
mother  from  his  most  terrible  tragedies.  King  Lear, 
and  Othello,  in  which  the  daughters  have  the 
stress,  though  these  are  wives  also.  The  tragic 
mother,  Lady  Macbeth,  can  fling  under  foot  her 
motherhood  for  ambition's  sake,  and  demonically 
exclaim 


46  SEAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Come  to  my  woman's  breasts, 
And  take  my  milk  for  gall,  you  murdering 

ministers — 

I  have  given  suck  and  know 
How   tender    'tis   to   love   the   babe   that 

milks  me; 
I  would,  while  it  was  smiling  in  my  face, 
Have  plucked  my  nipple  from  his  boneless 

gums, 
And  dashed  its  brains  out — 

to  win  a  sovereignty  other  than  the  maternal. 
Cleopatra,  also  a  tragic  mother,  who  yields  up 
motherhood  to  passion,  says  at  the  last  pinch  of 
fate 

My  resolution's  fixed  and  I  have  nothing 

Of  woman  in  me — 

and  hence  nothing  of  the  mother.  Still,  as  she 
takes  the  venomous  asp  to  her  bosom,  caressingly 
she  fondles  it  in  memory  of  her  blessedest  mo- 
ment: 

Dost  thou  not  see  my  baby  at  my  breast 
That  sucks  the  nurse  to  sleep? 

So  she  approaches  death  with  a  flash  of  maternal 
instinct  breaking  up  from  her  deeper  heart.  But 
her  final  word  turns  back  to  her  Roman  lover,  her 
greatest  conquest:  ^'0  Antony — What  should  I 
stay" — whereupon  she  passes  beyond. 

There   is  no   doubt   that    Shakespeare's  mother 
transferred  to  her  own  family  the  refinement,  the 


THE    ABDENS  47 

good-breeding  and  the  culture  of  the  Ardens 
Through  all  the  ups  and  downs  of  her  husband, 
she  doubtless  kept  her  home-life  intact  for  her 
children.  Can  we  construe  some  traits  of  the  son 
from  what  the  mother  must  have  imparted  to  him 
in  his  youth?  First,  as  already  noted,  he  unques- 
tionably derived  from  her  the  aristocratic  bent 
which  we  find  in  his  works.  The  family  tree  of  the 
Ardens  could  not  help  flowering  in  that  household. 
She  probably  inducted  him  first  into  the  child's 
storyland,  for  the  woman  is  the  natural  depository 
of  the  fairy-tale,  ballad,  popular  song,  and  folk- 
lore generally,  which  are  ever  recurrent  in  Shake- 
speare's plays.  Whence  else  did  he  first  catch  this 
bit  of  floating  legend : 

0  that  it   could  be  proved 
That  some  night-tripping  fairy  had  exchanged 
In  cradle-clothes  our  children  where  they  lay, 
And  called  mine  Percy  and  his  Plantagenet ! 

The  stories  and  the  expressions  of  Scripture, 
with  which  he  shows  such  familiarity,  he  probably 
heard  first  at  his  mother's  knee.  If  the  Yolumnia 
of  Coriolanus  pictures  her  influence,  Shakespeare 
was  spiritually  much  more  of  an  Arden  than  of  a 
Shakespeare.  We  have  to  think  him  altogether 
more  deeply  mothered  in  his  home-life  than 
fathered,  and  the  boy  could  not  help  feeling  it 
thoroughly.  The  coat  of  arms  which  the  poet  ob- 
tained for  his  father  John  Shakespeare  belonged 
by  mind's  birthright  to  his  mother  Mary,  whose 


48  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

family  had  also  a  coat  of  arms  which  the  son  sought 
official  permission  ''to  impale"  on  that  of  his 
father,  though  seemingly  an  obstacle  arose. 

The  whole  situation  recalls  that  of  Goethe,  doubt- 
less the  greatest  literary  genius  since  Shakespeare. 
How  often  have  we  during  this  narrative  had  to 
hum  the  lines  in  which  the  Weimar  poet  sings  of 
his  parentage  with  his  soul's  sweetest  music: 

Vom  Vater  hab'  Ich  die  Statur, 
Des  Leben's  ernstes  Fiihren; 

Vom  Miitterchen  die  Frohnatur, 
Die  Lust  zu  fabulieren. 

These  two  traits,  especially  the  latter,  ''the  delight 
in  fabling",  the  Little  Mother  (Miitterchen)  in 
both  cases  imparted  to  her  like-minded  son,  who 
voiced  it  eternally  in  Literature.  Each  mother 
had  the  happiness  of  living  to  see  her  heart's  own 
boy  the  greatest  man  of  his  age.  But  it  must  not 
be  forgotten  that  each  of  these  youths  served  up  to 
his  fond  mother  a  domestic  escapade  which  must 
have  made  her  wince  at  the  molt  of  young  genius, 
and  which  has  become  world-famous  in  the  lives  of 
both  poets. 

It  is  our  opinion  that  the  boy  in  a  scene  of  Titus 
Andronicus  (Act  IV.  sc.  1.)  reproduces  certain  do- 
mestic experiences  of  Shakespeare  during  his 
school-days.  This  was  an  early  drama  of  the  poet, 
some  say  his  earliest,  and  his  home-life  plays 
through  it  (horrible  as  it  otherwise  is)  in  various 
ways.    An  aunt  also  is  introduced  into  it  who  loves 


THE    ABDENS  49 

**me  as  dear  as  e'er  my  mother  did,"  and  she  has 
also  been  a  domestic  teacher  who 

hath  read  to  thee 
Sweet  poetry  and  Tally's  orator. 

Nor  is  the  mother  herself  left  out,  for  when  the 
question  is  asked  of  the  boy,  what  book  is  that 
which  he  is  reading?  he  replies, 

'Tis  Ovid's  Metamorphoses — 
My  mother  gave  it  me. 

This  work  of  the  Roman  poet  is  known  to  have 
been  Shakespeare's  most  congenial  and  most  in- 
fluential school-book,  since  its  poetic  and  mythical 
power  over  him  can  be  traced  not  only  in  his  earlier 
but  also  in  his  later  productions,  even  till  his  last 
drama,  The  Tempest,  whose  lines  beginning  *^Ye 
elves  of  hills"  (V.  1.)  are  an  0 vidian  echo  from 
folding's  translation  of  the  Metamorphoses. 

But  just  now  we  may  well  be  moved  to  take  an- 
other brief  glance  at  the  significant  maternal 
memento  which  bespeaks  the  timely  present  to  the 
promising  school-boy,  whose  words  still  breathe 
his  affection  for  the  giver:  **My  mother  gave  it 
me. ' '  And  what  is  more  surprising,  that  very  copy 
of  Ovid  may  still  exist  with  Shakespeare's  signa- 
ture on  the  title.  But  where  and  when  did  he 
learn  his  Latin? 


50  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

III. 

Shakespeare  the  School-Boy. 

It  was  one  of  the  epochal  days  of  his  life  when 
the  little  laddie  Willie  Shakespeare,  aged  seven, 
stepped  across  the  threshold  of  the  Stratford 
Grammar  School,  in  which  he  was  destined  to  re- 
main under  instruction  some  six  or  possibly  seven 
years  (1571  till  1577-8).  At  this  source  he  was 
to  tap  the  fountain  of  the  age 's  culture ;  how  much 
did  he  drink  ?  Some  say,  very  little ;  others  affirm 
that  here  he  won  the  solid  and  lasting  elements  of 
all  that  classical  lore  with  which  his  works  from 
beginning  to  end  are  saturated.  Indeed  it  would 
seem  that  the  Baconian  theory,  which  insists  upon 
the  learning  of  the  author  Shakespeare  and  the 
ignorance  of  the  man  (or  actor)  Shakespeare, 
must  find  its  germinal  starting-point  in  what  the 
lad  did  acquire  or  could  acquire  in  the  Stratford 
Grammar  School. 

Given  the  aspiring  boy,  with  an  unquestioned 
talent  for  assimilating  quickly  everything,  with 
an  incentive  fostered  at  home  especially  by  his 
mother,  he  being  then  at  the  most  apperceptive  and 
remembering  time  of  life — what  could  he  get,  and 
what  was  his  opportunity?  We  have  before  us  his 
book  called  the  Works  of  William  Shakespeare, 
wherein  the  careful  scrutinizer,  especially  the 
open-eyed  practical  educator,  with  the  aid  of  the 
few  outside  facts,  can  construe  fairly  well  the  chief 


SHAKESPEAEE     THE    SCBOOL-BOY  51 

cultural  winnings  of  the  youthful  poet  during  his 
school-years,  from  seven  till  thirteen  or  fourteen. 

Let  us  foresay,  however,  that  this  Stratford  In- 
stitute had  long  been  in  existence,  but  had  recently 
been  remodeled  and  adjusted  to  the  spirit  of  the 
age.  The  Renascence  or  the  New  Learning,  as  it 
was  often  Anglicised,  had  penetrated  to  the  small 
town  on  the  Avon,  as  well  as  to  numerous  other 
communities  of  England,  and  for  that  matter,  of 
Europe.  It  was  a  time  of  spiritual  uplift,  both 
religious  and  secular;  we  may  well  think  that  a 
little  jet  of  the  World-Spirit  had  been  turned  on 
in  that  modest  school-room,  whereof  the  receptive 
youth  unconsciously  took  a  long  full  draught.  Al- 
ready when  he  entered,  the  boy  could  read,  and 
make  figures,  and  probably  write  a  little  after  the 
old  English  or  German  script.  But  the  main  study 
was  Latin,  then  the  mediating  speech  of  cultured 
Europe,  and  more  nearly  the  universal  tongue  of 
the  Renascence  than  any  other. 

It  is  evident  that  this  course  in  Latin  was  very 
thorough.  The  main  text-books  which  were  used 
have  been  identified  from  the  poet's  allusions  in 
his  plays,  and  the  method  of  instruction  can  also 
be  made  out  from  contemporary  documents.  It  is 
said  that  the  school  opened  at  6  A.  M.  and  lasted 
till  5 :30  P.  M.,  with  intermissions  for  breakfast 
and  dinner,  and  with  a  couple  of  shorter  recesses 
for  recreation.  That  is,  the  boy  at  school  then  had 
to  do  a  day's  work  extending  quite  through  ten 
hours,  without  counting  the  stops.    What  do  pupils 


52  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

and  parents  of  our  time  think  of  that?  Then  the 
chief  study  was  Latin,  Latin,  Latin  for  dear  life, 
as  the  great  struggle  of  the  age  was  to  get  hold  of 
the  implement  which  opened  the  road  to  the  best 
thought  of  the  past  as  well  as  of  the  present.  The 
first  educational  duty  of  the  still  backward  Eng- 
land was  to  connect  with  the  whole  stream  of 
Mediterranean  civilisation,  and  to  partake  of  its 
highest  spiritual  fruitage,  from  ancient  Greece  and 
Rome  down  to  modern  Italy,  to  which  can  be  ap- 
pended the  other  Latinized  countries  like  France 
and  Spain.  There  is  no  doubt  that  Latin  then  was 
the  chief  literary  conduit  to  the  remoter  European 
peoples,  who  partook  of  the  new  intellectual  life 
known  as  the  Renascence.  Hence  we  can  under- 
stand the  persistence,  yea  the  desperation  with 
which  Latin  was  studied  in  all  Teutonic  countries 
of  that  time,  which  were  then  just  emerging  into 
their  modern  historic  destiny.  This  school  even 
emigrated  with  the  English  colonies  to  America  in 
the  Shakespearian  era. 

It  is  evident  that  the  youth  Shakespeare  during 
those  years  of  his  freshest  acquisitive  powers,  could 
take  up  and  inoculate  his  budding  genius  with  the 
new  spirit  of  the  time,  of  which  that  Stratford 
Grammar  School  was  a  manifestation  as  well  as  an 
instrumentality.  Ten  hours  a  day  for  six  or  seven 
years  between  the  ages  of  seven  and  fourteen !  The 
results  of  this  considerable  fragment  of  schooling 
can  be  traced  in  every  drop  of  ink  that  ever  flowed 
from  his  pen.     To  be  sure,  the  bright  boy  often 


SHAKESPEABE     THE    SCHOOL-BOY  53 

wearied  of  the  tedious  drill  which  was  probably 
necessary  for  the  slower  minds — that  is  the  case 
still  today.  Nor  did  the  merry  lad  have  pleasant 
memories  of  his  frequent  trouncings,  which  the  old 
pedagogues  deemed  the  best  medicine  for  mischief 
and  even  for  mental  backwardness,  though  the 
latter  might  have  its  source  in  a  physical  defect, 
bad  eyes,  for  instance.  Hence  spring  the  rather 
ungracious  slurs  on  schools  and  schoolmasters,  of 
which  quite  a  piquant  anthology  may  be  gathered 
from  Shakespeare's  writings.  But  the  sufficient 
answer  to  himself  is  both  the  spirit  and  the  knowl- 
edge which  radiates  everywhere  from  his  pages. 

The  language  teacher  of  to-day  will  be  inclined 
to  hold  that  the  method  of  instruction  was  more 
internally  transforming,  even  more  deeply  edu- 
cative as  far  as  it  went,  than  that  of  our  own  time. 
For  instance,  those  Stratford  boys  were  taught  not 
only  to  read  Latin,  but  to  speak  it,  and  to  under- 
stand it  when  spoken.  Eye,  ear  and  tongue  were 
all  practised  together  for  winning  a  complete  mas- 
tery over  a  foreign  idiom.  In  our  present  Acade- 
mies, High  Schools,  and  Colleges,  the  chief  and 
often  the  sole  exercise  is  to  translate  from  the  dead 
Latin  text  into  deader  English.  But  the  school- 
boy Shakespeare  was  trained  in  Latin  conversation, 
and,  after  a  daily  practice  of  several  years  not  only 
in  reading  the  language  but  in  hearing  it  and  speak- 
ing it,  had  a  more  intimate  living  acquaintance 
with  its  spirit  and  a  greater  command  over  its 
structure,  than  any  pupil  is  likely  to  have  who 


54  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

is  taught  after  the  manner  of  to-day.  A  little 
Greek  the  master  would  naturally  impart  to  the 
most  promising  pupil  of  his  school,  for  even  surly 
Ben  Johson,  and  perhaps  envious  at  times,  plum- 
ing himself  on  his  University  erudition,  confessed 
that  Shakespeare  had  some  Greek  though  it  was 
less  than  his  ''small  Latin."  Still  it  is  probable 
that  Shakespeare's  Hellenic  studies  never  delved 
very  deep  into  the  original  sources. 

It  was  chiefly  the  Latin  poets  who  fed  the  boy's 
geniUis  during  his  school-days.  Ovid,  Horace, 
Virgil  were  given  in  precious  bits  and  even  memo- 
rized; nor  were  the  dramatists  neglected — Seneca, 
Plautus,  Terence.  Cicero's  prose,  and  Seneca's 
seemingly,  would  have  its  place  in  any  curriculum 
of  the  Eenascence.  That  impress  of  Latin  verse, 
which  can  be  traced  in  every  poem  Shakespeare 
ever  wrote,  could  only  have  been  given  in  early 
years  at  the  Stratford  School.  And  that  subtle  in- 
grained intimacy  with  the  Latin  idiom,  so  that  he 
can  often  be  detected  transferring  un-English 
Latin  words  and  constructions  off-hand  into  his 
English,  was  certainly  gained  in  his  juvenile 
studies. 

Perhaps  we  can  put  our  finger  upon  the  actual 
classical  book  which  he  loved  most  and  knew  best, 
and  which  had  the  greatest  influence  over  him — 
Ovid's  Metamorphoses.  This  fact  of  him  was 
recognized  during  Shakespeare's  life-time  by 
Francis  Meres  the  critic,  who  speaks  of  ''the  sweet 
and  witty  soul  of  Ovid"  as  our  poet's  own;  and 


SHAKESPEAEE     THE    SCHOOL-BOY  55 

Holofernes,  the  schoolmaster  in  Love's  Labor  Lost, 
proclaims:  ''Ovidius  Naso  was  the  man,  and  why 
indeed  Naso  (Nosey)  but  for  smelling  out  the 
odoriferous  flowers  of  fancy,  the  jerks  of  inven- 
tion?" Ovid's  Metamorphoses  is  a  vast  handbook 
of  Greek  Mythology  turned  into  flowing  grateful 
Latin  hexameters,  and  this  book  became  Shake- 
speare's abounding  quarry  for  the  mythical  lore 
strown  all  through  his  pages.  Moreover  Ovid  be- 
longs to  the  ancient  Latin  Renascence  of  the 
Augustan  age;  the  Gods  and  their  deeds  are  no 
longer  objects  of  faith,  but  rather  of  amusement 
and  of  allegorical  play.  Ovid  narrates  Greek  le- 
gends as  entertaining,  illustrative,  fanciful  litera- 
ture; in  other  words  he  is  not  primarily  mythical 
but  paramythical.  Now  Shakespeare  uses  the 
Greek  Mythology  in  the  same  paramythical  man- 
ner, which  he  doubtless  caught  and  practised  in  his 
school-days.  (See  Goethe  in  the  Second  Part  of 
Faust  for  the  greatest  modern  paramyth-maker.) 

Then  again  Ovid  is  the  poet  of  love,  and  on  this 
side  touches  a  still  deeper  strand  of  affinity  with 
the  English  poet.  It  is  true  that  the  Ovidian  con- 
ception of  love  is  relatively  superficial,  sensual, 
sportive — more  that  of  a  poetic  stimulus  or  a 
pastime's  plaything  than  of  a  mighty  overwhelm- 
ing passion.  Love  does  not  use  him,  but  he  uses 
love.  Very  different  is  this  from  Shakespeare  at 
his  highest.  Still  the  latter,  in  his  early  comedies, 
shows  himself  as  more  or  less  Ovidian  in  his 
amatory  light-hearted  outpourings.     But  when  in 


56  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

his  Second  Period,  the  Dark  Lady  gets  her  full 
clutch  in  his  heart,  the  fun  turns  to  an  intense 
crushing  earnestness  and  even  suffering.  Love  is 
no  longer  a  playful  little  Cupid,  but  a  death-deal- 
ing Fury  who  smites  even  her  strongest  devotees 
right  and  left,  making  them  tragic.  Here  we  may 
observe  that  Ovid,  though  the  favorite  Latin 
reading-book  in  the  schools  of  the  Renascence  and 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  has  been  quite  banished  from 
the  secondary  instruction  of  our  modern  time,  or 
admitted  only  in  an  extremely  jejune  and  expur- 
gated form.  The  far  chaster  Virgil  has  driven  him 
out,  since  girls  have  been  coming  to  classes  in 
Latin  along  with  the  boys,  and  reading  its  litera- 
ture. But  into  the  door  of  the  Stratford  Grammer 
School  no  maiden  dared  peep,  though  Portia  of 
Venice  knew  Latin,  and  her  like  in  such  lore 
could  have  been  found  also  in  England.  I  cannot 
see  much  influence  of  Virgil  permeating  Shake- 
speare, in  spite  of  some  allusions,  for  instance  to 
Dido 's  love  and  to  the  false  Sinon. 

It  may  well  be  asserted,  though  the  contrary 
opinion  is  usually  held,  that  Shakespeare  could 
have  gotten,  and  probably  did  get,  considerable 
training  in  the  use  of  his  native  tongue  at  that 
school.  Certainly  there  must  have  been  a  good 
deal  of  translation  from  Latin  into  the  vernacular, 
by  those  Stratford  school-boys.  Manj^  a  turn  of 
Golding's  English  version  of  Ovid's  Metamor- 
phoses has  been  uncovered  in  Shakespeare,  show- 
ing that  he  too  had  in  the  undergraduate's  slang 


SHAKESPEABE    THE    SCHOOL-BOY  57 

a  *'pony"  at  hand  probably,  as  Golding's  book 
was  popular,  and  ready  for  him,  having  been 
printed  only  four  years  before  he  entered  school 
(1567).  The  curious  fact  has  been  dug  up  that 
Ovid's  exquisite  word  Titania  (with  its  dulcet 
syllables  and  even  inner  rhymes)  is  not  found  in 
Golding,  who  uses  the  title  Diana  instead,  but  is 
employed  at  first  hand  by  Shakespeare,  who  could 
have  met  it  only  in  the  original  Latin,  and  there 
have  felt  its  subtle  melody,  almost  making  us  hear 
the  moonshine's  music  to  which  the  fairies  dance 
in  Midsummer  NigJiVs  Bream. 

Still  further,  Shakepeare's  vernacular  was 
deeply  influenced  by  the  English  Bible,  which  was 
read  in  school  and  probably  at  his  home.  The  ver- 
sion whicii  he  in  one  way  or  other  appropriated 
was  not  that  of  King  James,  which  did  not  appear 
till  the  poet's  work  was  practically  done  (1611), 
but  the  Genevan  version  (1560).  His  poetry 
abounds  in  scriptural  turns  and  allusions  from  be- 
ginning to  end,  showing  that  he  was  saturated  with 
the  Bible  in  his  early  years.  Indeed  all  England 
was  becoming  in  his  time  a  people  of  one  book, 
whose  spirit  and  phraseology  were  taking  posses- 
sion of  the  nation's  soul.  That  book  was  the 
great  religious  folk-book  of  the  ages,  the  two  Hebrew 
Testaments,  with  which  Shakespeare's  very  con- 
sciousness was  thoroughly  infiltrated,  as  recent 
authors  have  shown  in  hundreds  of  parallel  pass- 
ages. Very  suggestive  is  such  a  fact,  proving  that 
the  universal  poet  had  appropriated  not  only  the 


58  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

secular  but  the  religious  trend  of  his  age.  This 
is  not  saying  that  he  was  a  learned  theologian,  or  a 
violent  sectary  of  any  kind;  he  went  neither  way 
to  extremes.  It  is  often  stated  that  he  was  a  de- 
cided anti-Puritan,  but  the  passages  cited  from  his 
works  do  not  prove  the  assertion.  And  on  the  other 
hand  he  was  not  a  strict  Puritan  nor  anything 
fanatical  (The  recent  book  of  the  Rev.  Thomas 
Carter,  Shakespeare  and  Holy  Scripture,  is  not 
convincing  at  every  point,  but  it  shows  overwhelm- 
ingly, yea  surprisingly  to  many  an  old  Shake- 
spearian, how  the  poet  was  steeped  through  and 
through  with  biblical  speech  and  spirit.  He  was 
like  Goethe,  hihelfest,  as  the  Germans  say — doubt- 
less in  the  main  through  his  mother's  influence). 

Thus  Shakespeare  could  well  have  had  some  su- 
perb instruction  in  English  from  the  printed  page 
during  his  school  years.  The  question  will  come  up : 
How  much  better  or  worse  is  the  modern  profes- 
sorial way  which  rams  down  the  pupil's  throat  a 
crystallized  vernacular  with  little  or  no  fluidity  or 
elasticity  1  Shakespeare  himself  has  keenly  satirized 
the  pedantry  of  the  linguistic  pedagogues,  whose 
trammels  he  must  have  already  felt  as  a  school-boy. 
To-day  we  flee  back  to  his  diction's  freedom,  for  he 
keeps  his  language  plastic,  self -transforming,  hence 
ever-young  and  ever-growing.  The  Olympian  sov- 
ereignty over  his  mother-tongue  may  well  be 
deemed  one  of  Shakespeare's  most  masterful 
achievements,  and  it  must  have  begun  at  school, 
though  by  no  means  confined  to  that  one  spot  or  to 


SHAKESPEABE    THE    SCHOOL-BOT  59 

any  other.  He  seems  to  tap  the  creative  source  of 
all  human  speech,  and  to  make  it  flow  down  into 
English,  which,  accordingly,  in  his  work  shines  out 
as  if  new-made.  In  language  as  in  other  matters 
he  shows  his  gift  of  transfiguration,  the  unique  seal 
of  his  genius.  Plot,  character,  story,  word  are  all 
handed  to  him  by  time;  but  then  just  behold  the 
grand  metamorphosis ! 

Nothing  of  him  that  doth  fade 
But  doth  suffer  a  sea-change 
Into  something  rich  and  strange. 

Somehow  we  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  boy^s 
schoolmaster  or  one  of  the  two  (or  perhaps  three 
there  were)  must  have  been  a  personal  influence  in 
the  poet's  development,  though  no  record  gives  us 
permission  to  say  so.  Simon  Hunt,  B.  A.,  graduate 
of  Oxford  and  hence  a  classical  scholar  of  some  at- 
tainments, is  handed  down  as  the  principal  of  the 
school  during  five  years  of  young  Shakespeare's 
stay.  Did  that  teacher  not  soon  discern  the 
brightest  youth  among  his  pupils  and  foster  his 
talent  with  some  special  instruction,  for  which  he 
certainly  had  time  during  those  long  dragging 
school-hours?  Possibly  he  may  have  glimpsed  in 
him  the  rising  genius  of  the  age,  and  nourished  its 
peculiar  bent  by  the  tales  of  classic  heroes,  being 
himself  a  good  story-teller  gifted  with  imagination 
and  humor.  Such  country  schoolmasters  of  the  old 
style  we  have  seen  here  in  our  American  West, 
who  could  tell  again  the  tale  of  Troy  to  their  boys 


60  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

with  the  zest  of  an  ancient  Homeric  rhapsode.  One 
thing  is  certain :  Shakespeare  was  veritably  soaked 
in  the  antique  Mythus,  so  that  it  became  struc- 
tural in  his  brain-work,  a  living  ingredient  of  his 
whole  mental  make-up.  Where  and  how  did  he  get 
it?  Not  after  he  went  to  London,  he  was  then  too 
busy  and  in  fact  too  old;  at  Stratford  was  its 
original  winning,  being  appropriated  largely  from 
the  school  and  the  schoolmaster  there.  So  we  dare 
think  without  specially  documented  proof.  Then 
into  this  classical  fund  the  quick-witted  lad  must 
have  spun  the  native  home-grown  Mythus,  which 
naturally  flowed  from  the  lips  of  the  people  at 
large  and  from  his  own  home-folk,  specially  his 
mother  and  his  aunts;  six  of  the  latter  we  must 
remember,  two  of  them  husbandless. 

Much  valuable  knowledge  for  his  future  career 
Shakespeare  the  school-boy  must  have  gained  dur- 
ing these  years  of  youthful  acquisition.  But  one 
book  seems  to  stand  out  above  all  others  for  its  com- 
patibility with  his  budding  genius  as  well  as  for  its 
permanent  influence  over  his  life :  the  already  men- 
tioned Metamorphoses  by  the  Roman  poet  Ovid. 
But  Shakespeare  must  have  felt  something  deeper 
in  this  book  than  the  easy-sailing  narrative,  or  the 
liquid  hexametral  verse,  or  even  the  golden  cadence 
of  its  poetry,  which  his  Holof  ernes  so  praises.  He 
foreboded  his  own  deepest  self  in  that  idea  of  Meta- 
morphosis, the  very  potentiality  of  his  coming 
genius.  For  is  he  not  able  to  metamorphose  him- 
self and  his  experience  into  all  forms  of  humanity, 


8HAKE8PEABE     THE    SCHOOL-BOY  61 

into  those  hundreds  of  characters  of  his  dramas,  as 
if  they  were  just  his  own  manifold  self-realisation  ? 
It  is  true  that  one  finds  no  such  creative  genius  as 
Shakespeare  in  the  personality  of  Ovid,  far  from 
it;  still  there  lies  the  deeper  suggestion  in  that 
word  Metamorphosis  which  the  Roman  poet  picked 
up  quite  externally  from  Greek  Mythology,  and 
superficialized  into  little  more  than  agreeable 
story-telling.  Originally  in  the  Hellenic  mind  it 
had  a  much  profounder  meaning  which  Shake- 
speare must  have  presaged  as  the  genetic  power 
underneath  all  these  divine  transformations.  There 
seems  to  us  already  hinted  in  the  process  of  Meta- 
morphosis that  unique  transfiguration  of  Man  and 
the  World,  which  we  have  already  remarked  as  the 
most  characteristic  stamp  of  our  poet 's  genius.  We 
may  also  dream,  for  it  can  do  us  no  harm,  that  his 
mother  divined  some  such  endowment  in  her  boy 
when  she  gave  him  a  copy  of  just  this  book  of 
Ovid,  as  already  we  have  dramatically  hearkened 
him  saying:     ''My  mother  gave  it  me." 

Let  another  little  fact  be  here  set  down  which 
the  reader  may  cap  out  with  some  more  of  his 
dreamery,  if  he  be  in  the  mood.  A  copy  of  the 
famous  Aldine  (Venetian)  edition  of  Ovid's  Meta- 
morphoses printed  in  1502  can  be  seen  in  the 
Bodleian  library  with  an  inscription  on  the  title 
somehow  thus:  Wm.  She.,  which  certain  experts 
affirm  to  be  the  poet's  genuine  hand-writing.  Did 
he  buy  the  work  on  his  Italian  trip  at  Venice,  per- 
chance from  some  book-sellinsj  Aldus?     Or  is  this 


62  8HAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

the  very  copy  which  already  at  Stratford  the  boy 
received  from  his  mother,  who  got  it — whence? 
Enough. 

But  now  comes  the  cardinal  fact  that  the  school- 
boyhood  of  William  Shakespeare  is  brought  to 
close  somewhat  prematurely.  It  is  conjectured 
that  his  father  withdrew  him  from  his  studies  and 
set  him  to  work  to  help  gain  the  family's  liveli- 
hood. We  question  if  this  be  the  true  reason.  Our 
surmise  is  that  Shakespeare  of  his  own  account  quit 
school  because  he  was  dissatisfied  with  the  new 
master,  who  had  succeeded  in  1577  his  old  and  fa- 
vorite teacher,  Simon  Hunt.  If  the  boy  had  wished 
to  go  on  with  his  education,  his  mother  and  the 
Ardens  would  have  certainly  found  the  way.  Such 
a  change  of  instructors  is  still  a  source  of  school- 
leaving.  Thomas  Jenkins  has  been  handed  down 
as  the  name  of  the  new  master,  who  in  a  couple  of 
years  seems  to  have  lost  his  position,  as  he  was 
probably  a  misfit  from  the  start.  Doubtless  too 
he  was  a  Welshman,  whose  Latin  is  burlesqued  in 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor.  Some  such  unpleasant 
memory  is  the  cause  of  Shakespeare's  satirical  por- 
traits of  pedagogues  in  his  earlier  dramas,  like  that 
of  Holofernes  and  his  other  pedants.  And  the 
school  and  the  school-boy  himself  are  not  spared,  as 
we  can  catch  him  limned  in  the  well-known 
passage : 

.     .     the  whining  school-boy  with  his  satchel 

And  shining  morning  face,  creeping  like  snail 

Unwillingly  to  school  — 


SHAKESPEABE     THE    SCHOOLBOY  63 

SO  we  may  image  the  lad  Willie  Shakespeare, 
prompted  by  his  mother,  to  saunter  slowly  down 
the  Stratford  street  to  the  school-house,  where 
rules  the  hated  dominie,  forule  in  hand,  who  may 
have  flogged  him  the  first  day,  the  mischievous 
urchin  and  incipient  dramatist  full  of  young 
mockery,  which  pulses  through  his  penpoint  long 
afterwards  into  his  London  caricatures. 

What  follows?  I  think  we  can  detect  the  older 
reminiscent  Shakespeare  telling  on  his  youthful  self 
when  he  makes  the  school-boy,  after  quitting  his 
books,  pass  into  the  next  stage,  that  of  Nature's 
sensuous  evolution : 

And  then  the  lover, 
Sighing  like  a  furnace,  with  a  woeful  ballad 
Made  to  his  mistress'  eyebrow. 

True  certainly  of  Shakespeare  now  becoming  the 
adolescent  versifier.  And  so  we  have  reached  the 
passioning  juvenile  poet  who  begins  to  write  tender 
love-rhymes  in  response  to  the  elemental  urge  of 
early  human  emotion.  Of  course  the  songful  heart 
of  the  lad  just  turning  into  his  teens  may  have 
begun  already  at  school  to  burgeon  with  little 
amatory  versicles,  to  which  both  nature  and  art 
were  giving  him  the  inner  push  as  well  as  the  outer 
example. 

But  the  main  point  for  his  future  unique  great- 
ness is  that  the  young  Shakespeare,  now  at  the 
most  absorbent  and  apperceptive  time  of  life,  com- 
munes with  and  takes  up  into  himself  the  primal 


64  SHAKESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

race-civilizing  Mediterranean  culture,  both  mythi- 
cal and  historical,  religious  and  secular,  Classic  and 
Hebrew,  Heathen  and  Christian.  Moreover  he  be- 
gins to  fuse  this  Southern  cultural  strain  of  the 
noblest  past  with  the  Northern  elemental  energy  of 
the  outbursting  Anglo-Saxon  present,  crude  as  yet 
but  mightily  creative.  Indeed  Shakespeare  may  be 
deemed  the  literary  reconciler  of  Roma  and  Teu- 
tonia,  otherwise  so  irreconcileable.  For  the  recent 
world-war  was  at  its  start  but  another  outbreak  of 
the  bi-millenial  feud  between  the  North  and  South 
of  Europe,  between  the  Teutonic  and  the  Latin  civ- 
ilisations, both  of  which  William  Shakespeare  (as 
we  shall  often  note  hereafter)  sought  to  take  up 
into  his  personal  culture,  marrying  them  har- 
moniously in  his  art,  and  thereby  expressing  their 
unity  throughout  his  Life-drama. 

IV. 

The  Adolescent  Shakespeare. 

After  leaving  school  when  he  was  thirteen  or 
fourteen,  there  is  a  total  gap  in  the  record  of  his 
life  which  lasts  some  four  or  five  years.  Only  one 
dubious  and  meagre  anecdote  told  long  afterwards 
by  gossipy  Aubrey  fills  the  ominous  vacancy^  and 
thus  it  runs:  Young  Shakespeare  is  said  to  have 
assisted  his  father  in  the  latter 's  trade,  which  was 
then  that  of  a  butcher.  Our  informant  adds,  with 
a  fabulous  tinge:     ''When  he  killed  a   calf,   he 


TRE    ADOLESCENT    SHAKESPEABE.  65 

would  do  it  in  high  style  and  make  a  speech." 
Possibly  this  is  a  popular  echo  of  the  boy's  native 
bent  toward  the  drama  already  manifesting  itself 
in  his  daily  task. 

The  much  deeper  question,  however,  springs  up : 
What  salient  experiences  of  life  was  the  coming 
poet  to  get  and  to  lay  up  from  the  time  of  his  quit- 
ting school  till  his  marriage,  say  from  his  four- 
teenth till  his  nineteenth  year?  The  turning  and 
trying  period  of  youth  is  this  in  the  development 
of  the  human  being,  both  mentally  and  bodily;  it 
is  the  transitional  time  of  life's  adolescence,  when 
nature  drives  the  incarnate  person  toward  creation, 
and  mind  follows  in  nature 's  wake.  It  becomes  the 
starting-point  of  many  activities,  physical  and 
spiritual;  especially  does  the  distinctive  indi- 
viduality of  the  man  now  begin  to  test  itself,  and 
to  grope  about  in  its  environment  for  its  needed 
food.  The  adolescent  Shakespeare  must  have 
started  to  show  the  original  and  originating 
Shakespeare,  his  mind  would  swell  to  bud  forth  that 
special  form  which  it  afterward  matured,  expand- 
ing to  seek  for  those  experiences  which  were  fitted 
to  nourish  its  growth. 

But  now  this  capital  stage  of  his  evolution  we  are 
wholly  to  conjecture,  inasmuch  as  it  is  rather  the 
blankest  chasm  in  Shakespeare's  whole  biography 
as  far  as  documents  are  concerned.  What  then  is 
to  be  done?  We  must  construe  these  four  or  five 
years  from  what  he  knew  and  wrought  in  his  later 
fulfilment;  we  can  look   from  the  height  of  the 


66  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

mountain  and  measure,  in  part  at  least,  what  lies 
at  the  base.  Moreover  adolescence  has  its  common 
character,  its  general  outline  in  all  mankind,  yea 
its  principles  which  every  man  knows  from  his  own 
experience  and  also  from  literature. 

I.  We  believe  that  he  kept  up  his  studies  after 
quitting  school,  doubtless  in  a  somewhat  desultory 
way  but  still  effective.  Every  ambitious  boy  would 
do  so,  has  done  so,  and  will  do  so  again.  Especially 
Latin,  probably  his  favorite  branch,  never  fell  out 
of  his  mind;  there  is  ample  evidence  that  he  knew 
it  and  read  it  after  he  went  to  London  and  became 
a  writer  of  plays,  in  which  work  he  shows  his  ac- 
quaintance, even  if  limited,  with  ancient  Roman 
Literature.  Moreover  he  could  easily  obtain  help 
at  Stratford  from  the  schoolmaster,  from  the 
clergyman,  and  from  other  educated  people  of  the 
town  and  neighborhood,  most  of  whom  would  nat- 
urally take  an  interest  in  the  aspiring  boy,  who  is 
seeking  to  improve  himself  under  adverse  circum- 
stances. Have  we  not  all  seen  the  same  thing 
to-day,  even  in  the  frontier  towns  of  America? 
Then  the  mother  at  home  would  certainly  encour- 
age her  promising  son,  especially  as  her  other  sons 
seem  not  to  have  shown  any  capacity  or  zeal  for 
improvement.  Hints  of  this  maternal  pride  in 
himself  the  poet  mirrored  long  afterward  in 
Volumnia,  mother  of  Coriolanus.  Her  family,  the 
Ardens,  well-off  and  influential,  would  not  fail  to 
give  encouragement  to  the  bright  scion  of  the 
kindred. 


THE     ADOLESCENT    SHAKESPEABE.  67 

John  Shakespeare,  the  father,  during  these  years 
was  falling  deeper  and  deeper  into  financial  mis- 
fortune and  personal  insignificance.  Moreover  the 
town,  Stratford,  had  become  a  sinking  community, 
having  lost  slowly  its  former  prosperity  and  im- 
portance. Young  Shakespeare  could  not  help 
observing  this  decline,  and  would  turn  for  assist- 
ance to  his  mother  and  her  wealthier  people.  Prob- 
ably John  Shakespeare,  rustic  and  plebeian,  had 
small  patience  with  the  son's  studies,  and  would 
crush  him  down  into  continuous  hard  work  for  the 
sake  of  wresting  from  his  earnings  a  little  more 
money.  But  the  mother  saw  to  it  that  her  boy 
Willie  had  his  chance.  At  least  we  dare  so  con- 
strue the  relation  in  that  family,  even  if  the  poet 
has  left  no  such  lasting  poetic  record  of  his  father 
as  of  his  mother. 

At  this  point  we  cannot  help  thinking  of  another 
great  character,  Abraham  Lincoln,  whose  adolescent 
years  were  guarded  for  study  by  his  mother  (in 
this  case,  his  step-mother)  against  the  pressure  of 
an  unappreciative  father.  In  Herndon's  report 
she  is  recorded  as  saying :  *  *  I  induced  my  husband 
to  permit  Abe  to  study  at  home  as  well  as  at  school. 
At  first  he  (the  husband)  was  not  easily  reconciled 
to  it, ' '  but  she  had  her  way.  In  that  noisy  Lincoln 
household  ' '  we  took  particular  pains  not  to  disturb 
the  boy — would  let  him  read  on  and  on  till  he  quit 
of  his  own  accord. ' '  If  Abraham  Lincoln,  why  not 
William  Shakespeare?  In  fact  Lincoln's  oppor- 
tunities for  education  were  far  inferior,  certainly 


68  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

not  a  quarter  of  those  of  Shakespeare.  Lincoln 
himself  declared  that  ''the  aggregate  of  his  school- 
ing did  not  amount  to  one  year",  and  that  little  in 
a  remote  backwoods  school.  The  following  bit  is 
also  from  his  pen:  if  a  straggling  teacher  ''sup- 
posed to  understand  Latin  happened  to  sojourn  in 
the  neighborhood,  he  was  looked  upon  as  a  wizard. ' ' 
Yet  which  of  the  two  has  written  the  more  eternal 
English  words:  Shakespeare  or  Lincoln?  The 
Tribunal  of  the  Ages  must  wait  a  while  to  decide; 
eternity  is  not  here  yet. 

II.  During  this  time  the  investigating  youth 
must  have  become  acquainted  with  his  environment 
— both  his  special  community  and  the  surrounding 
country.  The  processes  of  farm-life  he  picked  up, 
and  probably  he  took  a  hand  in  tilling  the  soil 
along  with  his  father's  people,  the  Shakespeares. 
That  basic  culture  of  society  and  also  its  poetical 
substrate,  agriculture,  we  find  ingrained  both  in 
his  language  and  in  his  thought.  Then  the  many 
festivities  connected  with  rural  life  he  must  have 
seen  and  shared  in,  for  we  find  them  recurring 
with  zest  in  his  plays.  He  shows  an  intimate  knowl- 
edge of  sports — hunting,  hawking,  cock-fighting, 
bear-baiting;  evidently  he  liked  dogs  and  horses  at 
first  hand.  Festivals  also  he  would  attend  and  ap- 
propriate as  a  poetic  phase  of  his  little  world; 
pageants,  religious  and  secular,  become  a  part  not 
only  of  his  knowledge  but  of  his  very  consciousness 
during  these  years,  and  manifest  their  influence 
directly  in  his  dramas  till  the  close  of  his  days. 


THE    ADOLESCENT    SHAKESPEABE.  Q() 

His  calendar  often  recalled  the  saints  and  their 
days  prescribed  by  the  old  church — St.  George  and 
the  Dragon,  Easter,  Lammas  tide.  May-day  with 
its  pole  and  dance  and  poetry  was  one  of  his  de- 
lights. From  his  allusions  we  know  that  he  took 
pleasure  in  the  tale  of  Robin  Hood  and  the  group 
of  Outlaws  who  had  fled  to  the  forest,  and  he  may 
have  played  or  even  dramatized  the  story  in  his 
youth.  Doubtless  from  it  he  derived  the  first  hint 
of  that  flight  from  society  to  the  unsocial  woods, 
which  runs  through  so  many  of  his  •  plays ;  the 
adolescent  evidently  made  his  own  this  legend,  once 
the  most  popular  of  rural  England.  Through  the 
neighboring  Forest  of  Arden  he  could  ramble, 
and  dream  himself  escaping  from  the  troubles  and 
wrongs  of  the  town  and  home.  And  why  should 
not  his  rambles  have  extended  to  the  dreamy 
mountains  of  Wales,  the  right  home  of  his  elfin 
folks?  So  he  must  have  won  the  creative  experi- 
ence for  that  flight  in  his  dramas  to  a  primitive 
condition,  or  to  an  idyllic  love-world,  such  as  we 
see  in  his  As  You  Like  It. 

The  negative  or  nether  side  of  life  he  would 
curiously  dip  into  during  this  inquisitive  time.  He 
doubtless  came  to  know  somewhat  of  every  tap- 
room in  little  Stratford,  and  there  were  thirty  of 
them,  according  to  an  accepted  report.  Crapulous 
Eastcheap  of  his  London  days  the  alert  poetic  ap- 
prentice glimpsed  already  at  Stratford,  along  with 
Falstaff  and  his  jolly  crowd  of  bummers.  The 
poet-haunted  Mermaid,  the  London  tavern  of  the 


70  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

Muses,  could  hardly  have  shown  him  Sir  Toby 
Belch  and  the  gang  of  Falstaffian  low-lived  revelers, 
who  belong  to  the  Shakespearian  universe,  and  to 
the  Lord's  also,  it  would  seem. 

III.  During  these  formative  years  young  Shake- 
speare could  have  witnessed  a  good  deal  of  acting 
by  professional  players.  As  yet  the  Puritan  op- 
position to  the  drama  had  not  overtaken  Stratford, 
as  it  did  later.  In  fact,  several  times  in  the  course 
of  the  year  different  troupes  would  play  at  the 
town-hall.  It  may  be  said  that  the  rising  con- 
sciousness of  England  in  its  highest  literary  ex- 
pression was  getting  to  be  dramatic — ^which 
tendency  in  the  boy  was  to  culminate  hereafter  in 
the  man  Shakespeare.  So  this  little  speck  of  the- 
atrical Stratford  in  his  evolution  became  a  prepa- 
ration and  a  prophecy. 

Thus  while  these  adolescent  years  ran  on,  there 
was  enough  opportunity  for  Shakespeare  to  find 
himself,  to  feel  the  innate  bent  of  his  own  spirit 
which  deeply  partook  of  that  of  the  age.  Then  he 
had  some  theoretic  knowledge  of  the  drama  of  the 
past ;  comic  Plautus  he  could  well  have  read  at  the 
Stratford  Grammar  School,  and  perchance  have 
dipped  into  tragic  Seneca — both  these  Roman 
dramatists  he  designates  in  his  Hamlet.  Little  the- 
atricals among  the  town 's  people  were  not  wanting, 
in  response  to  the  push  of  the  time.  Even  *'the 
rude  mechanicals"  of  Midsummer  Night's  Dream 
the  boy  could  easily  have  witnessed  at  Stratford  in 
their  suggestion  if  not  in  their  crass  reality. 


THE    ADOLESCENT    SffAKESPEABE.  71 

It  is,  therefore,  our  view  that  Shakespeare  began 
to  feel  his  budding  career  in  this  open  inquisitive 
adolescent  period  of  life.  In  other  words,  he  be- 
came desperately  stage-struck,  and  never  could 
again  be  at  peace  with  himself,  till  he  had  done  his 
duty  toward  the  call  of  his  genius  by  becoming  a 
dramatist.  Under  this  spur  he  finally  pushed  for 
London,  and  there  he  soon  found  his  congenial  en- 
vironment, whence  he  started  upward.  In  fact 
adolescence  is  just  the  time  for  getting  stage- 
struck  in  boy  or  girl,  when  nature  makes  her  prime 
creative  lurch  both  in  body  and  mind,  and  drives 
toward  her  original  gift's  gratification. 

IV.  There  can  be  little  doubt  of  his  pushing  to 
write  in  these  tentative  years.  Along  with  the 
flowering  of  the  poet's  adolescence  would  come  the 
intense  desire  for  self-expression,  especially  in  a 
creative  genius  which  must  out.  Already  at  the 
Grammar  School  he  could  hardly  escape  a  good 
deal  of  practice  through  his  translation  of  Latin 
poetry  into  the  vernacular,  under  the  critical  eye 
of  his  master.  Some  popular  forms  of  verse  in  this 
lyrical  time  of  life,  for  instance  the  ballad  and  the 
song,  he  had  already  often  heard  and  imitated,  at 
the  same  time  sipping  at  the  first  fount  of  folk- 
lore. But  now  he  begins  to  translate  not  Latin  so 
much  as  his  own  life's  experience,  external  and  in- 
ternal, into  his  English  idiom. 

One  thinks  that  droplets  of  these  early  versicles 
may  have  seeped  through  into  the  later  layers  of 
his  poetry.    He  often  introduces  snatches  of  some 


72  SHAKESPE  ABE'S    LIFE -DE  AM  A 

singing  ballad  into  his  dramatic  situations,  poetical 
jetsam  which  could  well  have  floated  down  from 
the  present  time  of  native  song-bubbles.  There 
are  several  sonnets,  especially  the  last  two,  which 
do  not  rise  above  the  clever  metering  adolescent,  as 
well  as  not  a  few  dialogues  in  his  plays  which  rol- 
lic  about  somewhat  boyish.  I  believe  that  Venus 
and  Adonis  is  essentially  his  poem  of  adolescence 
and  its  passion,  even  if  he  made  additions  and 
changes  before  its  publication  in  1593.  For  the 
theme  of  this  poem  is  sensuous  love  in  all  its 
adolescent  exhilaration  and  exuberance.  And  mu- 
sical became  his  spirit's  attunement,  as  this  is  the 
time  for  the  soul's  most  exquisite  response  to  the 
concordance  of  sweet  sounds.  Adolescence  is  the 
world  in  which  to  thrill  and  to  dance  in  answer  to 
nature.  All  through  Shakespeare's  dramas  warbles 
his  love  of  music — did  he  as  a  boy  play  any  instru- 
ment? The  town-fiddler  existed  at  Stratford  as 
everywhere,  with  his  little  band  of  ''twangling 
Jacks";  we  may  glimpse  them  in  Romeo  and 
Juliet,  headed  seemingly  by  Simon  Catling  (mod-, 
ern  cat-gut  scraper).  And  the  village  song-singer' 
did  not  fail,  nor  the  verse-spouter  like  Lincoln's 
Jack  Kelso  of  vanished  New  Salem,  who  is  sup-: 
posed  to  have  introduced  Shakespeare  to  the  life-i 
long  love  of  our  great  American  President.  Recall 
the  death-foreboding  Lincoln  on  his  last  trip,  when 
he  was  heard  to  voice  his  dark  presentiment  in  the 
words  of  the  poet,  as  they  haunted  him  with  their 
ominous  prophecy  and  gave  him  their  unearthly 


TEE    ADOLESCENT    SEAKESPEABE.  73 

power  to  express  himself  in  the  very  presence  of 
his  own  Fate : 

Duncan  is  in  his  grave, 
After  life's  fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well, 
Treason  has  done  his  worst ;  nor  steel  nor 

poison. 
Malice  domestic,  foreign  levy,  nothing 
Can  touch  him  further. 

V.  Somewhat  after  the  preceding  manner  we 
are  going  to  assume  that  the  young  Shakespeare 
gave  evidence  of  his  talent  to  his  comnmnity, 
which  recognized  him  as  its  bright  lad.  Every 
little  American  town  selects  instinctively  its  best 
man,  and  likewise  its  best  boy,  often  hailing  the 
latter  as  its  youthful  prodigy,  and  the  coming 
President  of  the  United  States.  And  so  in  its  way 
did  little  Stratford,  which  could  also  give  to  its 
favorite  the  very  human  counterstroke  of  petty 
jealousy.  But  the  town  was  large  enough  to  feel 
the  spirit  of  the  time,  and  to  respond  to  all  forms 
of  the  drama  which  were  then  fermenting — the 
newer  histories,  \Comedies,  tragedies,  as  well  as  the 
earlier  interludes,  moralities,  mysteries  even 
pantomimes  and  dumb-shows.  Such  were  some  of 
the  cruder  materials  which  the  adolescent  Shake- 
speare now  appropriated  from  his  home-town  and 
its  neighborhood,  and  which  he  is  to  transform  into 
his  future  life-work.  England's  dramatic  pro- 
toplasm we  may  deem  it,  now  everywhere  yeasting 
with    its.    coming    supreme    literary    expression. 


74  SKAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Shakespeare  will  show  these  elemental  ingredients 
in  all  his  later  productions;  several  of  them  may 
be  traced  even  in  his  greatest  Hamlet. 

During  this  time  we  have  to  think  that  Shake- 
speare won  his  unique  intimacy  with  immediate 
Nature,  which  he  shows  in  all  his  writ,  and  which 
often  tingles  him  to  a  creatiye  participation  in  her 
subtlest  processes.  Dame  Nature  he  must  have  ob- 
served and  experienced  in  her  secretest  haunts,  as 
well  as  in  her  very  act  of  genesis.  Particularly  the 
vegetable  kingdom  he  indwelt,  since  he  so  often 
metamorphoses  the  plant  into  poetry.  He  seems  to 
have  possessed  an  inborn  flower-soul,  if  we  may 
judge  by  the  garlands  which  he  weaves  and  strews 
along  his  path  even  in  gardenless  London.  Here 
one  thinks  of  his  women  whose  speech  and  char- 
acter he  can  turn  to  a  human  inflorescence  and 
bloom-fragrance.  Perhaps  too  he  caught  up  all 
these  names  of  flowers  strown  over  his  book  from 
his  mother  and  his  aunts,  who  must  have  cultivated 
their  household  garden. 

If  we  compare  this  present  adolescent  time  with 
his  former  school  time,  we  flnd  that  each  furnishes 
its  own  distinctive  strand  to  his  future  work  and 
character.  The  one  gives  him  culture  the  other 
hands  him  over  to  nature;  the  one  is  past  and 
Classic  the  other  is  present  and  English;  more 
theoretical  the  one,  more  practical  the  other;  thu« 
he  passes  from  study  to  experience,  appropriating 
first  what  is  foreign,  and  then  what  is  native  to  the 
soil.    This  two  fold  strain  we  can  trace  all  through 


THE     ADOLESCENT    SHAKESPEABE.  75 

his  dramas,  constituting  often  their  two  threads, 
the  upper  and  the  lower,  the  cultural  and  the  nat- 
ural, the  aristocratic  and  the  popular,  the  one 
usually  cadencirig  verse  and  the  other  talking 
prose.  Still  more  deeply  we  may  glimpse  in  this 
dualism  that  of  Southern  and  Northern  Europe,  of 
the  Mediterranean  world  and  the  Germanic,  hint- 
ing the  centuries'  strife  between  Roma  and  Teu- 
tonia  still  active  to-day,  indeed  just  now  closing  its 
latest  and  bloodiest  assize. 

Thus  we  dare  construe  that  the  youth  William 
Shakespeare  in  two  successive  eras  of  his  juvenile 
training  took  up  into  himself  the  two  chief  strains 
of  European  civilisation.  Unconscious  of  this 
ultimate  fact  of  his  education,  he  nevertheless  im- 
bibed it  as  an  embryo  which  he  will  hereafter 
mightily  evolve  and  utter,  for  just  that  is  the  bur- 
den of  his  genius.  Moreover  he  must  have  felt  the 
difference,  yea  the  conflict  between  these  two  world- 
views  and  their  peoples,  for  his  work  hereafter  is 
to  bring  them  together  and  to  reconcile  them  in  his 
way,  which  is  that  of  art,  specially  the  dramatic. 

VI.  But  from  this  far-away  look  into  elsewhere, 
we  shall  now  turn  and  take  a  peep  down  into  his 
heart  where  is  already  swelling  and  bursting  up 
into  utterance  that  sovereign  emotional  nature  of 
his,  which  on  the  whole  must  be  acclaimed  his  most 
compelling  power  over  his  fellow-man.  Is  not 
Shakespeare  the  greatest  lover  that  ever  lived  and 
the  most  contagious  ?  Indeed  he  never  stops  giving 
vent  to  this  adolescent  fire  of  his  soul  till  the  cur- 


76  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

tain  falls  on  his  old-age;  for  instance,  we  feel  its 
glow  still  in  his  Tempest,  well-taken  as  the  grand 
finale  of  his  Life-drama.  Eightly  love  may  be  re- 
garded as  his  most  universal  theme,  to  which  he 
gives  his  deepest  intensive  expression  both  in  its 
godlike  and  demonlike  manifestations,  portraying 
its  destructive  as  well  as  its  constructive  energy. 

Here  we  touch  the  largest,  strongest,  most  last- 
ing experience  of  the  poet  Shakespeare — his  love's 
defeats  and  triumphs,  his  own  heart's  tragedies 
and  comedies,  which  his  genius  poured  forth  into 
the  enduring  word.  He  was  certainly  endowed 
with  more  than  his  quota  of  love's  ecstasies  and 
tortures.  The  primal  outburst  of  this  mighty 
energy  would  naturally  take  place  during  these 
youthful  years.  The  Titanic  adolescent  must  have 
quaked  with  the  tempestuous  ups  and  downs  of  his 
elemental  passion,  which  now  distinctly  opens  its 
sluices  and  never  ceases  its  overflow  into  his  utter- 
ance. No  personal  record  we  have  of  Shakespeare 's 
early  love-throes,  such  as  we  possess  of  Goethe  and 
of  Dante.  But  Shakespeare  seems  to  have  had  a 
huger  volcano  of  adolescence  aflame  with  love  in 
his  young  heart  than  either  the  German  or  the 
Italian  poet,  though  they  were  by  no  means  want- 
ing in  this  two-edged  gift  of  the  Gods. 

Finally  the  slow  years  touch  the  swift  moment 
when  his  love  or  his  passion  suddenly  flares  up 
into  a  flame  of  fame  or  notoriety  which  seems  to  in- 
crease with  time  till  now.  A  little  rural  affair  of 
heart  has  caused  more  discussion  than  any  other 


SHAKE8PE  ABE'S    MABBIAGE.  77 

biographic  fact  of  Shakespeare.  The  bound- 
bursting  passionate  youth  has  reached  the  breaking 
point  of  his  years  of  mentionless  obscurity  and 
erupts  into  fierce  spoken  daylight;  adolescence 
pushes  him  forth  to  its  extreme  in  the  deed. 

So  we  come  to  the  role  of  Anne  Hathaway  in 
Shakespeare 's  Life-drama,  through  which  she  plays 
under  a  diversity  of  masked  forms  from  beginning 
to  end,  and  even  beyond  the  poet's  end  she  holds 
out,  living  longer  than  he  did.  His  most  cardinal 
experience  of  Stratford  is  fatefully  connected  with 
her  name  and  with  her  woman-nature;  in  fact  it 
may  be  said  that  without  her  part,  this  Life-drama 
of  the  poet  in  its  present  shape  is  quite  inconceiv- 
able. Let  us  see  if  we  can  catch  through  the  ii^ter- 
vening  and  distorting  centuries  some  right  glimpse 
of  Shakespeare's  wife,  and  of  her  contribution  to 
his  life's  discipline  and  expression. 

V. 

Shakespeare  *s  Marriage. 

Overhasty,  compulsory,  secret — who  was  to 
blame,  he,  she,  or  both,  or  perchance  neither?  Such 
is  the  problem  or  chain  of  problems,  which  looms 
up  at  the  present  turn  of  the  poet's  life  before 
every  reader  of  Shakespeare,  man  and  especially 
woman,  and  which  is  capable  of  being  looked  at 
from  many  a  little  nook  of  defense  and  of  attack, 
or  of  simple  curious  neutrality.     The  daring  boy 


78  SB AKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

seems  to  break  out  of  adolescence  into  marriage  at 
one  jump  along  with  the  sun.  For  it  so  happens 
that  the  long  night  of  the  previous  five  years  is 
now  suddenly  dispersed  by  the  daylight  of  au- 
thentic evidence;  co-temporary  documents  can  be 
cited  for  every  step  in  this  far-reaching,  deeply 
determining  crisis  of  his  career. 

Fact  first  is  that  toward  the  end  of  1582,  young 
William  Shakespeare,  then  a  little  more  than 
eighteen  years  and  a  half  old,  was  married  to  Anne 
Hathaway,  the  daughter  of  a  substantial  yeoman 
of  Shottery  in  the  neighborhood  of  Stratford,  the 
wife  being  some  eight  years  older  than  the  hus- 
band, according  to  the  inscription  on  her  tomb- 
stone which  in  such  case  would  be  most  likely  to 
tell  the  naked  truth.  Fact  second  informs  us  that 
in  less  than  six  months  after  the  marriage  rite,  a 
child,  Susanna,  was  born  to  the  pair,  the  baptism 
of  the  infant  being  of  record  in  the  Stratford 
Church  under  the  date  of  May  26th  1583.  Fact 
third  is  that  a  written  instrument  exists  indicating 
that  the  marriage  must  have  taken  place  in  quite 
a  hurry,  namely  ''with  once  asking  the  bans  of 
matrimony",  instead  of  the  customary  three  times 
with  intervals  between.  Of  course  there  was  good 
reason  for  this  unusual  precipitation.  Fact  fourth 
brings  us  the  surprise  that  the  parents  of  the  bride- 
groom, who  was  a  minor  and  hence  still  an  infant 
in  law,  are  not  mentioned  in  the  marriage  bond, 
and  evidently  were  not  present  at  the  final  cere- 
mony.    On  the  other  hand  the  bride's  people  and 


SHAKESPE  ABE'S    MABBIAGE.  79 

friends  were  in  emphatic  evidence  through  all  the 
proceedings.  Hence  it  has  been  inferred  that  the 
act  of  marriage  was  kept  secret  from  the  Shake- 
speares  and  the  Ardens.  Verily  a  hurried,  one- 
sided, clandestine  affair,  in  which  the  infant 
William  Shakespeare  gets  a  wife  and  also  an  in- 
fant of  his  own,  passing  out  of  his  previous  eclipse 
into  the  full  blaze  of  a  famous  deed  and  eternal  on 
account  of  the  eternity  of  the  man. 

Many  have  been  the  censures  and  their  rebuttals, 
many  the  explanations  and  apologies  as  well  as  in- 
vectives and  scandal-mongerings  swathing  about 
this  first  great  adventure  of  the  youthful  poet ;  but 
let  them  pass.  Our  part  is  to  accept  it  as  a  fact 
coloring  all  his  days  afterward,  as  a  pivotal  experi- 
ence in  his  destiny,  without  which  he  probably 
never  would  have  turned  down  the  road  from 
Stratford  to  London,  and,  who  can  tell? — might 
never  have  become  Shakespeare  the  dramatist. 

But  the  deed  is  done,  the  whole  secret  gets  out 
and  is  scattered  broadcast  by  busy  tongues  ever 
ready  to  volunteer  in  such  a  telling  cause.  Scandal- 
mongering  was  then  and  still  is  a  popular  enter- 
tainment, for  man  and  woman.  Stratford  won  a 
name  for  success  in  this  business,  if  in  none  other. 
But  the  families  concerned  must  have  had  their 
own  cud  for  silent  rumination.  Even  the  dismal 
antiquarian  would  break  a  smile,  if  he  could  dig  up 
what  the  Shakespeares  said  on  the  occasion,  con- 
templating this  escapade  of  the  finest  scion  labeled 
with  their  name.    And  what  would  the  aristocratic 


80  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

Ardens  whisper  through  their  startled  household, 
especially  the  two  spinster  aunts?  Would  their 
barbed  tongues  spare  those  plebeian  Hathaways? 
But  oh!  what  a  heart-break  would  the  mother, 
Mary  Arden  Shakespeare,  sigh  forth  at  this  mesal- 
liance of  her  darling  boy,  who  had  already  shown 
the  most  promising  mind  of  the  whole  connection, 
and  for  whom  she  had  such  a  high  ambition,  espe- 
cially in  the  way  of  matching  him  properly,  that 
prime  maternal  duty!  Her  one  bright  hope 
darkens  to  despair,  as  she  is  compelled  to  swallow 
this  bitterest  dose  of  her  motherhood.  Poor 
woman!  she  already  had  much  to  suffer  from  her 
husband's  ever-deepening  failure  in  life,  with  pos- 
sible reproaches  from  her  kin  for  her  own  eariy 
mesalliance.  And  now  her  boy,  pride  ana  prop 
of  her  advancing  days,  has  married  a  peasant  girl, 
and  soon  has  a  six  months'  baby  on  hand.  Fate 
of  the  parent  of  genius  it  seems;  Frau  Rath, 
mother  of  Goethe,  had  even  a  harder  trial. 

But  we  emphatically  maintain  that  after  the 
first  shock  had  passed,  the  poet's  mother  clung  to 
her  son,  and  did  what  was  possible  for  him  and  his 
under  the  circumstances.  And  he  never  forgot  her 
devotion  at  his  most  trying  ordeal  of  fate.  Many 
years  later,  a  quarter  of  a  century  in  fact,  he  cele- 
brated her  as  ' '  the  most  noble  mother  in  the  world ' ' 
under  the  guise  of  the  Roman  matron,  Volumnia, 
and  confessed 

There's  no  man  in  the  world 
More  bound  to  his  mother. 


SHAKESPE  ABE'S    MABBIAGE.  gl 

All  of  which  we  construe  as  a  debt  of  gratitude 
paid  in  the  worthiest  way  he  could  pay  it,  when 
he  had  returned  a  rich  and  famous  man  to  Strat- 
ford from  London. 

After  another  year  and  nine  months,  Anne, 
Shakespeare's  spouse,  gave  birth  to  twins,  a  boy 
and  a  girl  who  were  named  Hamnet  and  Judith 
after  Hamnet  Sadler  and  his  wife  Judith,  known 
as  Shakespeare's  friends.  And  evidently  staunch 
friends  they  were  in  the  pinch  of  sorest  need,  being 
held  worthy  to  receive  such  marked  recognition 
instead  of  either  of  the  kindred  families,  which 
might  shun  the  honor.  The  baptism  of  the  twins, 
probably  three  days  after  their  birth,  is  dated} 
Feb.  2nd,  1585.  Shakespeare  must  have  lived 
toward  three  years  with  his  wife  before  leaving  for 
London.  It  was  no  easy  time  for  the  young  pair. 
The  boy-husband  had  no  independent  means  of 
livelihood.  His  father,  sunken  in  fortune,  could 
do  nothing  for  his  son,  and  was  probably  in  ill 
humor  at  the  match  besides.  Of  course,  the  rich 
blue-blooded  Ardens  averted  their  eyes  and  their 
cash  from  the  scapegrace  of  their  blood.  How  did 
the  couple  live?  Support  must  have  come  largely 
from  the  side  of  the  wife.  Anne  had  some  money 
of  her  own  inherited  from  her  father,  who  had 
died  shortly  before  her  marriage.  Doubtless  she 
possessed  other  means,  but  probably  not  much. 
Shelter  for  the  pair  must  have  been  found  with  her 
relatives  in  the  cottage  at  Shottery — with  the 
Hathaways,  not  with  the  Shakespeares  or  Ardens. 


82  SHAKE8PE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

But  in  the  flow  of  the  exacting  years  her  funds 
must  have  commenced  to  run  low,  and  the  young 
husband's  few  wage  pennies  would  not  suffice. 
Probably  at  this  point  her  tongue  broke  loose,  and 
he  had  to  listen  to  many  a  reproach  for  the  insuf- 
ficient support  of  his  family.  Well,  she  had  some 
provocation;  similar  upbraidings  from  the  mouth 
of  the  ill-supported  wife  are  not  unknown  to-day. 
Of  some  such  experience  Shakespeare  has  left  as 
mementos  conjugal  pictures  in  several  of  his  earlier 
plays.  The  scolding  wife  Adriana  in  Comedy  of 
Errors  has  altogether  more  red  blood  in  her  con- 
duct and  words  than  any  other  character  of  the 
play,  so  that  we  begin  to  think  she  must  have  been 
photographed  from  the  living  model.  Then  the 
Taming  of  the  Shrew  is  rather  tame  till  Katherine, 
the  shrew,  begins  to  make  the  argument  lively  with 
her  tongue  and  her  caprices,  which  Petruchio  in  the 
play  has  to  meet  and  put  down,  though  Shake- 
speare himself  fled  from  the  task.  Other  lesser  in- 
stances might  be  traced  in  his  more  youthful 
dramas,  showing  that  a  slashing  termagant  had 
spun  a  quivering  thread  through  his  Life-drama, 
and  left  vivid  memories,  which  it  is  his  peculiar 
gift  of  genius  to  transmute  to  acting  persons  on  the 
stage. 

Another  reminiscence  of  his  marriage  portion  he 
bore  with  him  to  the  end  of  his  days — the  picture 
of  the  jealous  woman  or  several  pictures  taken  of 
her,  the  same  example  being  used  in  several  atti- 
tudes or  on  different  occasions,  when  he  was  lashed 


SHAKESPEARE'S    MABBIAGE.  §3 

scornfully  by  her  tongue's  scourge.  Here  again 
we  are  inclined  to  see  that  the  wife  had  a  good  deal 
of  provocation.  That  young  husband,  talented  and 
gallant,  eight  years  her  junior,  had  been  a  free 
rover  and  lover  among  the  country-girls  around 
Stratford,  and  probably  did  not  renounce  fully 
the  habit  after  a  forced  wedlock.  Of  these  female 
rivals  Anne  Hathaway  had  been  the  one  who  had 
caught  him,  being  at  the  same  time  caught  herself. 
She  must  have  known  well  the  situation,  which  by 
the  way  is  highly  conducive  to  jealousy:  husband 
more  youthful,  higher-born,  better  educated,  with 
that  poetic  gift  of  making  sweet  love-verses  on  the 
spot.  Hence  she  would  naturally  call  him  to  a 
reckoning  for  any  little  absence  out  of  hours,  or 
for  any  stray  look  of  his  toward  another  woman, 
which  she  might  detect.  The  female  character 
Adriana  (already  alluded  to)  in  Comedy  of  Errors 
has  her  tongue  sharpened  to  the  keenest  edge  by 
her  jealousy,  with  which  so  many  of  Shakespeare's 
women  are  touched  more  or  less  stressf ully.  Nor 
are  his  men,  including  himself,  devoid  of  this  pas- 
sion; best  known  is  Othello.  But  Anne  Hathaway 
will  be  amply  avenged  by  the  Dark  Lady,  who  tor- 
tures her  poet  more  than  Anne  ever  did  or  could 
her  husband. 

Possibly  this  wedding  experience  may  help  ac- 
count for  another  fact  in  Shakespearian  por- 
traiture. He  had  the  tendency  to  make  the  girl 
chase  after  her  lover:  against  which  many  a  high- 
spirited  female  reader  has  been  heard  loudly  to 


84  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

protest,  and  one  male  reader  I  know  of.  In  an 
overflowing  juvenile  play,  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  he 
causes  a  group  of  four  high-bred,  daring  young- 
women  to  storm  the  Castle  of  Learning,  which 
they  know  is  occupied  by  four  young  gentle- 
men who  have  taken  the  vow  of  celibacy:  **not  to 
see  a  woman."  What  a  libel  on  the  sex!  Prob- 
ably Shakespeare  could  cite  in  defense  from  his 
own  book  of  life  that  Anne  Hathaway  had 
stormed  his  Castle  without  his  consent  by  sheer 
violence,  and  that  her  love's  labors  were  not  lost. 
It  looks  as  if  she  took  the  initiative  from  the  first 
eye-glance.  But  the  most  courageous,  victorious 
man-hunter  in  our  Shakespeare's  book  of  ladies  is 
the  heroine  set  forth  in  All's  Well  That  Ends  Well, 
the  redoubtable  Helena,  whose  mighty  will  is  able 
to  stake  her  womanly  honor  that  she  win  to  be  her 
husband  the  man  whom  she  loves.  Dare  we  not 
imagine  that  in  portraying  such  a  conqueress  the 
poet  felt  the  echo  of  a  far-off  experience  of  his 
own  with  Anne  Hathaway?  At  any  rate  she 
trapped  her  prize,  namely  a  husband,  by  a  similar 
device,  even  if  disguised  with  some  thin  variations. 
Still  we  feel  in  duty  bound  to  speak  a  good  word 
for  Anne  Hathaway,  even  if  she,  being  eight  years 
older  than  her  boy-lover,  may  have  to  take  the 
chief  blame  for  their  common  slip,  especially  from 
her  own  sex.  But  if  she  did  more  than  her  share 
of  the  loving  and  marrying,  on  the  other  hand  she 
did  more  than  her  share  in  the  maintenance  of  the 
new-born  family.    That  she  expressed  at  times  to 


8HAKESPE  ABE'S    MABBIAGE.  35 

her  youthful  help-meet  his  lack  of  help  with  some 
asperity  of  temper,  is  excusable,  even  if  not  alto- 
gether admirable.  Mark  well  that  she  with  her 
relatives  in  the  old  farm  house  at  Shottery  must 
have  fed  the  children  of  William  Shakespeare  for 
years,  till  he  was  able  to  send  some  remittances 
from  London.  We  believe  that  the  poet  himself 
did  not  fail  to  appreciate  her  devoted  struggle  for 
his  three  babes,  and  when  he  had  won  his  economic 
independence,  he  returned  to  her  and  to  them  at 
Stratford,  providing  for  his  family  one  of  the 
finest  houses  in  town.  Of  the  two  she  was  not  the 
greater  sinner,  and  he  knew  it  well,  and  his  justice, 
and  still  more  we  believe,  his  generosity  certainly 
would  acknowledge  the  fact. 

To  be  sure,  theirs  was  not  an  ideal  marriage  at 
the  start,  nor  an  ideal  bond  through  life.*  Anne 
Hathaway  was  her  husband's  inferior  in  intellect 
and  education,  not  to  speak  of  social  rank.  A  true 
and  fitting  union  would  be  of  head  and  heart  as 
well  as  of  appetite,  and  it  is  probable  that  her 
greater  age  lessened  even  love's  sensuous  appeal, 
especially  with  the  exacting  years  of  her  maternal 
task.  We  can  understand,  though  we  may  not 
justify,  the  poet's  demonic  but  productive  infatu- 
ation for  a  talented,  witty,  high-bred,  much 
younger  woman,  who  as  the  Dark  Lady  will  here- 
after stir  the  most  exalted  strains  of  his  Muse. 
Still  I  do  not  believe  with  some  fault-scenting, 
rather  misogynistic  Shakespearians  that  the  poet 
ever  was  completely  estranged  from  his  wife,  the 


86  SHAKE  STB  ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

mother  of  his  three  children,  and  their  faithful 
nurse  through  their  long  and  trying  infantile  pov- 
erty. His  magnanimity  would  certainly  forgive, 
yea  justify  her  early  tongue-lashings  as  not  alto- 
gether undeserved.  They  probably  ceased  with  a 
full  coffer.  Moreover  I  can  see  him  return  to 
Stratford  after  eleven  years  (in  1596)  when  hus- 
band and  wife  met  in  reconciliation  over  the  grave 
of  their  dead  son  Hamnet — doubtless  the  hardest 
blow  of  fate  that  ever  smote  the  poet. 

So  we  conceive  Anne  Hathaway 's  part  in  Shake- 
speare's  Life-drama.  It  is  evident  that  he  in  his 
later  years  did  not  deem  his  escapade  the  au- 
spicious way  of  getting  married.  In  Twelfth  Night 
he  gives  a  warning  spoken  from  his  own  experi- 
ence: ''Let  still  the  woman  take  an  elder  than 
herself*'  as  a  married  mate.  Even  stronger  does 
wise  Prospero  emphasize  his  admonition:  **If 
thou  dost  break  her  virgin  knot  before''  the  mar- 
riage rite,  the  result  will  be  ''barren  hate,  sour- 
eyed  disdain  and  discord",  so  that  "you  shall  hate 
it  both",  namely  "the  union  of  your  bed."  Thus 
in  his  last  drama  we  catch  a  forbidding  echo  of  his 
early  relation  to  Anne  Hathaway.  Then  again  in 
Measure  for  Measure  the  movement  is  to  rescue 
from  the  clutch  of  the  law  a  man  who  is  guilty  of 
Shakespeare's  youthful  deed. 

Still  when  all  is  told,  we  are  not  to  forget  that 
Shakespeare  went  back  to  his  wife  and  family  at 
Stratford  in  the  plenitude  of  his  fortune  and  fame, 
and  sought  to  share  with  them  all  he  had  won  in 


SHAKESPE ABE'S    MABEIAGE.  87 

the  way  of  distinction  and  wealth.  Such  an  act 
can  only  be  construed  as  a  kind  of  atonement  for 
the  past,  of  which  feeling  Shakespeare's  later 
works  are  full.  There  breathes  a  spirit  of  re- 
pentance and  expiation  through  his  concluding 
dramas,  whose  deepest  note  is  restorative,  recon- 
ciling, mediatorial.  I  read  amendment  *and  rep- 
aration in  these  later  actions  of  Shakespeare  at 
Stratford,  which  bear  their  import  also  for  Anne 
Hathaway.  Thus  his  writ  mirrors  to  the  last  his 
soul's  deepest  experience. 

The  words  of  Prospero  in  the  Tempest,  probably 
the  poet's  final  play,  hint  his  cardinal  change  of 
spirit,  really  the  transition  to  his  closing  Period  of 
forgiveness  and  atonement  out  of  his  tragic  time 
of  fury : 

with  my  nobler  reason  'gainst  my  fury 
Do  I  take  part.    The  rarer  action  is 
In  virtue  than  in  vengeance:  they  being 

penitent 
The  sole  drift  of  my  purpose  doth  extend 
Not  a  frown  further.     Go  release  them, 

Ariel — 

which  may  also  be  conceived  as  Shakespeare's  own 
release. 

Contrition,  confession,  inner  absolution  are  of 
course  far  more  directly  and  personally  expressed 
in  the  sonnets  than  in  the  dramas.  An  example 
may  be  cited  (119) : 


88  SB AKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

What  potions  have  I  drunk  of  Siren  tears 
Distilled    from    limbecks    foul    as    Hell 

within — 
0  benefit  of  ill!  now  find  I  true 
That  better  is  by  evil  still  made  better! 
And  ruined  love  when  it  is  built  anew, 
Grows  fairer  than  at  first,  more  strong, 

far  greater; 
So  I  return  rebuked  to  my  content 
And  gain  by  ill  thrice  more  than  I  have 

spent. 

This  gives  a  very  suggestive  glimpse  of  Shake- 
speare's philosophy  of  life,  such  as  he  reached  in 
his  later  time  through  the  experience  of  evil,  which 
he  has  been  able  to  transmute  into  positive  good  or 
benefit.  And  that  once  ''ruined  love"  being  now 
*' built  anew,  grows  fairer  than  at  first,  more 
strong,  far  greater."  We  are  to  remember  that 
these  sonnets,  first  published  in  1609,  have  many 
hints  of  his  return  and  restoration  to  Stratford 
both  spatial  and  spiritual,  where  was  enacted  the 
scene  of  his  first  ''ruined  love."  But  the  deeper 
turn  here  is  the  very  process  of  his  new  reconcilia- 
tion, telling  in  the  lines  the  real  unmasked  message 
of  the  poet's  own  self,  of  his  stripped  ego,  which 
has  to  be  more  or  less  disguised  in  his  dramatic 
personages. 

Here  it  is  worth  while  to  add  another  sonnet  com- 
posed in  the  same  penitential  mood  which  shows 
the  man  at  his  own  soul's  confessional  (146)  : 


8EAKESPE  ABE'S    MABBIAGE.  89 

Poor  soul,  the  center  of  my  sinful  earth, 
Thralled  by  these  rebel   powers  that  thee 

array, 
Why  dost  thou   pine  within   and  suffer 

dearth?— 
Within  be  fed,  without  be  rich  no  more, 
So  shalt  thou  feed  on  Death  that  feeds  on  men, 
And  Death  once  dead,   there's  no  more 

dying  then. 

For  me  this  is  one  of  the  subtlest,  deepest  insights 
of  Shakespeare,  which  we  shall  not  fail  to  stress 
again,  intimating,  as  it  does,  what  is  the  supreme 
function  of  the  individual  in  this  existence  of  ours : 
he  is  to  conquer  Death,  and  thus  win  his  immor- 
tality. Evidently  Shakespeare  saw  or  felt  in  his 
loftier  contemplative  mood,  perchance  during  his 
Stratford  retreat,  which  gave  him  time  and  repose, 
that  he  had  achieved  this  ultimate  aim  of  all  Life : 
namely  the  undoing  of  Death,  Life's  last  enemy. 
Still  deeper  we  may  peer  into  the  depths  of  the 
foregoing  utterance,  which  gleams  to  us  destruc- 
tion as  finally  self -destroying  or  negation  as  self- 
negative  :  '  *  Death  once  dead ' ',  being  served  up  to 
itself  by  man,  ''there's  no  more  dying  then". 
Lastly  we  may  here  catch  Shakespeare  wielding  the 
sudden  lightning  flash  of  mind  known  to  some  of 
the  world's  greatest  thinkers  as  the  Dialectic  (not 
our  so-called  dialectics  by  any  means)  and  we 
query:  where  did  he  get  that?  Enough  of  this 
for  the  present,  but  more  anon  perchance. 


90  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

In  such  fashion,  we  put  together  the  first  stage 
and  the  last  of  Shakespeare's  marriage,  both  oc- 
curring at  Stratford  and  constituting  two  mem- 
orable turns  of  his  life's  total  discipline.  But 
there  was  an  intermediate  time,  that  of  his  separa- 
ration  from  family  and  town,  and  therewith  his 
flight  to  a  very  different  environment,  that  of  a 
great  city  with  its  vaster  outlook  and  opportunity. 

VI. 

Departure  prom  Stratford. 

It  is  not  known  on  what  day  of  what  month  of 
the  year  1585,  this  date  also  being  questioned,  the 
clock  struck  the  time  for  Shakespeare  to  quit  his 
birthplace  and  to  start  on  a  new  career  in  a  new 
world.  The  youthful  limit-breaker  had  probably 
felt  the  longing,  and  even  cherished  the  secret  re- 
solve to  take  such  a  step  out  of  his  narrow  environ- 
ment, which  was  ever  becoming  more  unbearable 
to  his  aspiring  spirit.  Already  young  men  of 
Stratford  had  broken  loose  into  the  greater  field  of 
the  city;  why  not  he?  At  any  rate  somewhere 
toward  the  end  of  the  mentioned  year  (1585),  he 
cast  his  farewell  look  at  his  twin  babes,  Hamnet 
and  Judith,  then  not  far  from  weaning  time; 
surely  he  would  give  them  a  kiss,  though  **  muling 
and  puking"  in  papa's  arms.  But  soon  he  turned 
down  the  road  toward  London,  already  the  goal  of 
his  poetic  dreams.     We  venture  to  say  that  his 


DEPABTUBE    FBOM    STBATFOBD.  91 

tender  heart  throbbed  more  than  one  tear,  as  he 
looked  back  and  saw  the  spire  of  the  Stratford 
Church  slowly  sink  out  of  vision,  possibly  with  the 
dim  but  daring  presentiment  that  he  would  one 
day  be  buried  under  it  as  a  world-hero,  to  whose 
tomb  pilgrimages  would  be  made  from  the  ends 
of  the  earth,  while  time  lasted,  perchance. 

There  is  little  doubt  that  his  situation  at  home 
was  galling.  The  rustic  but  laborious  Hathaways 
would  see  in  him  a  hungry  leech  on  their  estate. 
The  snappy  wife  would  cut  his  pride  by  letting 
him  feel  his  dependence  on  her  people,  snarling 
many  a  plebeian  sneer  at  his  pretentious  aristo- 
cratic kin,  the  Aldens.  Doubtless  he  would  hear  at 
Shottery  contempt  for  his  father,  poor  John 
Shakespeare,  and  ever  growing  poorer  till  he  sank 
all  his  wife's  property,  along  with  his  own,  into 
hopeless  indebtedness.  Not  a  pleasant  home  was 
that  for  all-attuning  William  Shakespeare  with  his 
unappreciative  helpmeet  and  three  drooling  and 
prattling  babes.  It  may  be  that  he  was  even  in- 
vited to  leave,  kicked  out  as  it  were  by  those  hard- 
fisted  leathery-palmed  sons  of  toil,  the  agricultural 
Hathaways,  who  had  more  than  Hotspur's  con- 
tempt for  anything  like  poetry,  which  must  have 
already  become  young  Shakespeare's  all-engross- 
ing passion  and  mental  occupation.  How  could 
he  help  yielding  to  the  Titanic  drive  of  his  genius 
now  bursting  into  its  early  flower? 

It  is,  therefore,  very  probable  that  the  young 
poet,  whose  nature  kept  bubbling  over  with  verses 


92  SEAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

on  all  occasions  during  these  years  (from  eighteen 
to  twenty-one),  the  very  heyday  of  sudden  spon- 
taneous poetic  eruptions,  was  not  a  good  laborer  at 
the  plough  01*  in  the  harvest-field.  With  the  strict 
farmer's  criterion  of  steady  work  the  rollicking 
rhymester  does  not  harmonize,  and  he  would  find 
little  sympathy  in  that  prosaic  household  with  its 
treadmill  tasks.  "What  a  nuisance  he  made  of  him- 
self spouting  his  jingles  and  love-ditties  at  those 
rustic  Philistines  instead  of  putting  his  hand  on 
his  hoe  and  keeping  it  there,  as  they  did!  Still 
we  may  imagine  our  ever-poetizing  Willie  seated 
at  the  kitchen  fire-side,  and  in  reply  to  some  scorn- 
ful fling  of  the  boors  coruscating  bright  metaphors, 
''while  greasy  Joan  doth  keel  the  pot." 

Doubtless  the  boy-poet,  sprinkling  his  inoppor- 
tune and  often  stinging  satirical  versicles  upon 
everything  and  everybody  about  him,  must  have 
met  with  vengeful  rebuffs.  His  gift  could  not  help 
calling  forth  many  a  frown  from  its  victims,  and 
many  a  sharp  word  of  jealous  disparagement.  Can 
we  catch  some  scene  out  of  his  later  books  in  which 
he  pictures  this  experience  of  his  under  a  mask  of 
course,  but  pulsing  its  words  directly  from  his  own 
life?  The  following  lines  seem  to  us  a  reporter's 
jotting  of  something  heard  on  the  spot,  possibly 
around  the  rustic  hearth  at  Shottery: 

I  had  rather  be  a  kitten  and  cry  mew 
Than   one   of  these   same  metre   ballad-mongers, 
I.  had  .rather    hear    a    brazen    canstick  turned. 
Or  a  dry  wheel  grate  on  an  axle-tree.  ■ 


DEPABTUEE    FEOM    STBATFOBD.  93 

Very  rural  are  these  telling  comparisons,  natural 
product  of  the  farm-house,  which  still  farther  ex- 
presses its  disgust  in  its  own  range  of  images: 

And  that  would  set  my  teeth  nothing  on  edge. 
Nothing  so  much  as  mincing  poetry, 
'Tis  like  the  forced  gait  of  a  shuffling  nag. 

Thus  young  Shakespeare's  poetic  art  appeared  to 
his  peasant  environment  as  unnatural,  forced, 
trivial.  To  be  sure,  it  is  Hotspur  who  is  here 
speaking,  but  the  part  hardly  suits  him,  the  aristo- 
crat, and  we  feel  it  to  be  Shakespeare 's  own  sketch 
of  himself  as  conceived  by  the  rustic  clod-hopper, 
and  flung  spitefully  into  his  own  face. 

Nor  should  we  fail  to  notice  in  this  connection 
that  haughty  Hotspur  also  voices  Shakespeare 's 
contempt  for  Welsh  folklore  and  perchance  super- 
stition, with  which  Glendower  keeps  seething  over 
on  all  occasions,  telling  of  those  miraculous  appear- 
ances, "the  earth  did  shake  when  I  was  bom'*, 
and  ''the  heavens  were  all  on  fire",  which  super- 
natural signs  "have  marked  me  as  extraordinary", 
so  that  "I  am  not  in  the  roll  of  common  men." 
Furthermore  Hotspur  complains  that  Glendower 
"held  me  last  night  at  least  nine  hours  in  reckon- 
ing  up  the  several  devils'  names  that  were  his 
lackeys."  This  tingles  evidently  a  Shakespearian 
echo  of  some  personal  experience.  Thus  into  the 
mouth  of  Hotspur  Shakespeare  puts  his  own  coiir 
siderable  acquainance  with  that  effervescent  Welsh 
imagination  as  he  heard  it  at  work  in  his  youth 


94  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFEDEAMA 

along  the  border  in  and  around  Stratford.  More- 
over the  Welshman  and  the  Englishman  are  here 
placed  in  sharp  contrast  as  regards  their  distinctive 
spiritual  attributes.  Hotspur,  also  addicted  to 
flurries  of  fantasy,  is  never  their  victim  but  stays 
anchored  in  his  clear  understanding,  while  Glen- 
dower  is  shown  the  thrall  of  his  fertile  imagination, 
even  if  he  employs  with  cunning  purpose  mystifica- 
tion as  a  means  of  power. 

The  drama  from  which  these  extracts  are  taken 
(Henry  IV,  First  Part)  is  full  of  the  poet's 
youthful  reminiscences  of  Stratford,  and  reminds 
of  the  town 's  frontier  character.  Doubtless  he  had 
seen  instances  of  what  happened  to  Mortimer: 
*'my  wife  can  speak  no  English,  I  no  Welsh.'* 
Also  Welsh  songs  are  sung  and  Welsh  dialogue  is 
spoken  in  this  drama,  both  of  which  the  boy  may 
well  have  heard  not  only  in  the  streets  but  also  on 
the  little  town-stage  at  Stratford,  for  the  place  was 
bi-lingual,  having  many  Welsh  and  half -Welsh  in- 
habitants. How  much  of  the  Welsh  tongue  the 
spry-witted  boy  Shakespeare  may  have  picked  up 
from  his  surroundings,  cannot  now  be  guessed ;  but 
of  his  funny  studies  in  the  Welsh-English  brogue 
we  have  considerable  samples  in  the  word-twists  of 
Parson  Evans  and  Captain  Fluellin. 

The  open-minded  reader  cannot  help  feeling  the 
personal  element  in  all  these  scenes;  they  are 
drawn  from  the  immediate  experiences  of  the  dra- 
matist himself,  who  here  transmutes  them  into  his 
most  vivid  spontaneous  poetry.    One  other  passage 


DEPABTUBE    FBOM    STBATFOBD.  95 

of  like  pith  we  should  take  from  Shakespeare's 
note-book,  whose  content  was  inscribed  at  least 
upon  his  brain  at  Shottery: 

Oh  he's,  as  tedious 

As  a  tired  horse,  a  railing  wife 
Worse  than  a  smoky  house — 

All  these  seem  to  be  the  poet 's  experiences  of  Anne 
Hathaway 's  cottage,  which  is  still  shown  to  the 
pious  pilgrim,  but  now  somewhat  fixed  up  with  a 
stove  for  visitors.  Th^n  this  fragrant  wafture 
from  the  old  kitchen  he  has  sent  reeking  down 
time: 

I  had  rather  live 
With  cheese  and  garlic  in  a  wind-mill,  far — 

on  which  well-scented  foods  he  was  regaled  to  a 
surfeit  at  that  simple  farmer's  table.  Shake- 
speare's nose  seems  to  have  been  the  most  re- 
sponsive and  critical  part  of  his  total  organism. 
He  was  a  grand  connoisseur  of  all  sorts  of  smells; 
especially  the  breath  of  the  working  common  people, 
laden  with  the  odor  of  garlic  and  onions,  was  as  un- 
endurable to  him  as  to  the  son  of  Roman  Volumnia. 
Still  we  may  wonder  how  he  could  tolerate  the 
stench  of  that  garbage  heap,  which  lay  under  his 
window  at  his  elegant  mansion  known  as  New 
Place,  on  account  of  whose  unsanitary  condition  the 
poet's  most  searching  and  re-searching  biographer 
(Halliwell-Phillips),  thinks  he  took  disease  and 
died. 


96  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

But  there  was  one  person  in  this  unfriendly  en- 
vironment of  Stratford  who  sympathized  with 
Shakespeare  and  all  his  troubles,  and  supported 
him  in  all  his  aspirations — that  was  Volumnia  the 
mother  of  our  Stratford  Coriolanus,  who,  ''poor 
hen,  has  clucked  thee  safely  home"  from  the  wars 
external  and  also  internal,  for  he  had  his  inner 
battle  as  well  as  his  outer  conflict  with  his  crushing 
circumstances.  So  he  fails  not  to  erect  her  lasting 
monument  in  a  play  which  he  must  long  have  medi- 
tated while  reading  his  Plutarch,  but  which  he 
probably  finished  shortly  after  her  death  in  1608. 
And  doubtless  he  could  read  a  good  deal  of  himself 
into  the  defiant  Coriolanus,  for  he  was  a  creative, 
yea  self-creative  reader  of  books.  Also  he  could 
not  help  often  recalling  his  mood  when  he  first 
took  flight  from  uncongenial  Stratford. 

It  is,  accordingly,  our  conception  that  Shake- 
speare had  been  ready  to  take  his  departure  for 
some  time  when  a  particular  event  put  speed  into 
his  lingering  footsteps.  This  was  the  famous  epi- 
sode of  his  deer-stealing,  which  is  said  to  have  oc- 
curred in  the  park  of  Sir  Thomas  Lucy  near  Strat- 
ford. The  ^rst  biographer  of  Shakespeare,  Nicho- 
las Rowe,  writing  in  1709,  that  is,  a  century  and 
a  quarter  after  the  event,  is  our  prime  voucher  for 
the  fact,  declaring  that  the  young  law-breaker 
''was  prosecuted  by  that  gentleman,  somewhat  too 
severely  as  he  thought, ' '  so  that  the  poetic  culprit 
"made  a  ballad  upon  him  .  .  .  which  is  said 
to  have  been  so  very  bitter  that  it  redoubled  the 


DEPABTUEE    FBOM    STBATFOED.  97 

prosecution  against  him,"  and  caused  his  sudden 
flight  to  London.  Moreover  Rowe  affirms  that  the 
said  ballad,  though  it  be  lost,  was  ''probably  the 
first  essay  of  his  poetry."  Impossible!  Shake- 
speare was  then  twenty-one  years  old,  and  the 
young  genius  full  of  creative  energy  had  babbled 
his  rhymes,  and  thrown  off  his  ballads  and  versicles 
from  his  early  boyhood.  Indeed  it  is  our  opinion 
that  he  carried  to  London  in  his  head,  and  possibly 
in  his  pocket  or  knapsack,  a  number  of  poetic  es- 
says and  fragments  which  he  will  use  in  his  later 
works. 

In  fact  this  very  experience  with  Sir  Thomas 
Lucy  he  directly  employs  in  two  of  his  more  mature 
plays.  The  first  scene  of  The  Merry  Wives  of 
Windsor  is  a  burlesque  on  the  poet 's  trial,  in  which 
Justice  Shallow  stands  for  Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  and 
for  the  offender,  who  is  Shakespeare,  is  substituted 
Sir  John  Falstaff,  against  whom  Shallow  makes  the 
charge:  ''You  have  beaten  my  men,  killed  my 
deer,  and  broke  open  my  lodge. ' '  Indeed  Windsor 
is  disguised  Stratford,  and  here  is  located  "in  the 
county  of  Gloster. "  Also  in  the  Second  Part  of 
Henry  IV  Shakespeare  has  introduced  the  same 
Justice  Shallow  as  the  object  of  Falstaff 's  con- 
tempt. Thus  the  poet  did  not  forget  to  satirize 
Sir  Thomas  Lucy  a  dozen  years  after  the  case  of 
deer-stealing  in  allusions  which  may  still  be  an 
echo  of  the  real  occurrences  and  even  of  the  old 
ballad. 

Still  all  such  grounds  of  accounting  for  Shake- 


98  SHAKESPE  ABE'S    LIFE  DB  AM  A 

speare's  flight  to  London  from  Stratford  are  rela- 
tively external;  the  deepest  necessity  for  this  step 
lay  in  the  push  of  his  genius.  He  knew  that  he 
must  change  his  environment  sooner  or  later.  The 
domestic  situation  might  prod  his  resolution,  and 
the  legal  embroilment  might  fix  the  very  day  or 
minute;  still  the  ultimate  motive  came  not  from 
without  but  from  within.  He  must  have  had  some 
dim  forefeeling  of  what  he  had  to  do  in  this  world, 
and  have  been  waiting  for  the  right  conjuncture.  A 
mature  man  of  twenty-one  he  knew  what  he 
wanted  and  where  lay  his  future;  he  had  re- 
peatedly seen  the  theater  and  tried  poetry ;  he  was 
already  stage-struck  and  verse-struck,  and  per- 
chance somewhat  city-struck.  With  the  deepest 
all-impelling  equipment  of  destiny  forth  lie 
marches  toward  his  goal. 

And  now  can  we  bring  before  ourselves  the  mood 
of  the  young  traveler,  probably  pedestrian,  as  he 
turns  down  the  road  toward  London,  and,  defeated 
seemingly  in  life,  takes  his  last  look  across  the 
Avon  bridge  at  his  receding  home-town?  Swaying 
between  melancholy  and  hope,  as  his  characters  so 
often  do,  we  may  cite  a  little  picture  of  him  drawn 
in  one  of  his  Sonnets  (No.  29),  which,  whenever 
written,  can  be  taken  as  a  kind  of  confession  sug- 
gestive at  least  of  his  present  mental  state  in  its 
oscillation  between  the  gloom  and  the  exaltation  of 
genius : 

When,  in  disgrace  with  fortune  and  men's  eyes, 
I  all  alone  beweep  my  outcast  state, 


TEE    AGE.  99 

And  trouble  deaf  heaven  with  my  bootless  cries, 
And  look  upon  myself  and  curse  my  fate, 
,    Wishing  me  like  to  one  more  rich  in  hope, 
Featured  like  him,  like  him  with  friends 

possessed. 
Desiring  this  man 's  art  and  that  man 's  scope, 
With     what     I     most  enjoy  contented  least; — 
Yet  in  these  thoughts  myself  almost  despising 
Haply  I   think   on   thee, — and  then   my  state 
Like  to  the  lark  at  break  of  day  arising, 
From     sullen     earth     sings     hymns     at 

heaven's  gate — 

Be  it  the  Muse,  or  some  man  or  some  woman,  who 
here  slides  into  his  soul  with  ''Haply  I  think  of 
thee",  the  result  is  the  same;  up  and  down  the 
gamut  of  pain  and  pleasure  he  fleets,  internally 
and  externally  teetering  along  the  road  to  London 
town. 

VII. 

The  Age. 

Having  cast  a  glimpse  inwardly  at  the  young 
man  taking  a  resolute  new  plunge  into  the  future 's 
ocean,  we  may  next  scan  outwardly  the  trend  of 
the  age  into  which  he  is  now  driving,  and  of  which 
he  is  to  make  himself  the  greatest  and  most  last- 
ing spokesman.  This  year  1585  had  seen  Elizabeth 
enthroned  in  England  for  a  quarter  of  a  century 
and  more;  the  Reformation  had  been  fairly  sta- 
bilized both  in  the  law  of  the  land  and  in  the  hearts 


100  SHAKESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

of  the  people;  the  religious  separation  from  Rome 
had  become  complete  and  final.  Then  the  political 
antagonism  between  the  Latin  world  and  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  was  rapidly  coming  to  a  head  and  was 
nearly  ready  to  break  out  into  open  war.  Latin 
Spain,  when  Shakespeare  was  sauntering  along 
the  highway  toward  London,  had  about  finished 
her  huge  fleet  blazoned  by  her  as  the  Armada  In- 
vincible, whose  far-heralded  object  was  the  de- 
thronement of  Queen  Elizabeth  and  the  subjuga- 
tion of  that  Northern  upstart  England  to  the 
Mediterranean  Church  and  State.  Thus  the  grand 
world-historical  collision  between  the  old  and  the 
new  civilisation,  or  between  Teutonia  and  Roma 
(or  rather  Romania)  in  its  most  recent  form,  was 
soon  to  be  fought  out  afresh  first  on  the  sea,  and 
then  perchance  on  the  land. 

All  Britain  seethed  in  a  ferment  of  which  the 
center  was  the  capital  city,  whitherwards  our 
young  poet  had  now  turned  his  look  and  his 
thought.  As  he  approached  the  heart  of  the  mael- 
strom, he  could  not  help  feeling  the  time's  mighty 
pulsation,  and  giving  to  it  some  utterance  after 
his  way,  nuances  of  which  we  may  still  trace  in  his 
earlier  dramas  on  English  History  with  their  dis- 
tinctive national  attunement. 

And  here  let  us  set  down  an  opposite  fact  by  way 
of  contrast,  a  light-point  of  reconciliation  amid  this 
dark  time  of  venomous  conflict  between  Northern 
and  Southern  Europe.  Our  youthful  poet  bore  in 
his  soul  on  his  journey  to  London  the  love  of  the 


THE    JrGE,\  101. 

Classical  Renascence,  especially  that  which  had 
been  taking  place  in  Italy  during  his  century  and 
the  previous  one;  that  revival  of  ancient  learning 
it  was  which  had  spread  over  Europe  and  had 
penetrated  even  to  little  Stratford,  in  whose  school 
the  lad  Shakespeare  had  drunk  deeply  and  last- 
ingly of  antique  Latin  culture,  as  we  have  already 
seen.  This  Classical  discipline,  which  unites  his 
spirit  so  intimately  with  the  South,  he  will  never 
forget,  but  will  cherish  it  and  use  it  to  the  end  of 
his  career.  We  shall  often  have  occasion  to  note 
with  what  affection  and  skill  he  conjoins  and  con- 
ciliates those  two  fighting  cultures,  the  Germanic 
and  the  Latin,  in  his  works,  especially  in  his  come- 
dies. Prom  this  point  of  view  we  are  to  conceive 
Shakespeare,  within  his  special  field,  which  is  the 
literary,  as  the  great  reconciler  of  the  centuries- 
long  European  feud  between  Germania  and  Ro- 
mania, who  have  just  yesterday  (1918)  concluded 
their  latest  but  bloodiest  and  most  destructive 
warfare  stretching  nearly  around  the  globe.  Hence 
if  the  new  healing  word  of  our  time  be  reconcilia- 
tion of  these  two  furious  antagonists  for  all  future 
ages,  the  sovereign  English  poet  has  already  ut- 
tered it  in  his  art,  and  to  us  imparts  it  through 
the  training  of  his  writ. 

But  coming  back  to  Shakespeare's  own  date,  we 
find  that  he  is  now  thrust,  headforemost  as  it  were, 
into  the  two  grand  strifes  of  his  people  and  of  the 
Elizabethan  era,  the  political  and  the  religious, 
which   scission    cleaves    Europe   into    two   hostile 


•IQ^    -  c  y  ^SHAKEi^PJiAiiE  'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

halves  both  in  Church  and  in  State.  Of  this  scis- 
sion he  will  show  a  few  discordant  traces.  On  the 
other  hand  out  of  the  supreme  European  dualism 
he  builds  in  his  spirit's  domain  his  all-subduing 
harmony,  poetical  and  cultural,  whose  concords 
just  now  perchance  thrill  sweeter  than  ever  to  the 
peace-hoping  soul  of  the  time. 

In  Shakespeare's  age  England  had  already  be- 
come too  small  for  England.  She  had  begun  to 
feel  herself  prisoned  in  the  tight  walls  of  her  tight 
little  island  home,  and  she  was  furiously  wrestling 
within  herself  to  burst  through  her  sea-limits  into 
a  free  new  world.  The  Wars  of  the  Roses  had 
been  fought  to  a  close,  and  had  largely  purified 
her  of  her  internal  discords  so  that  she  could  turn 
her  united  strength  outward,  beginning  that  globe- 
mastery  which  has  kept  widening  out  farther  and 
farther  down  to  the  present  moment,  the  recent 
war  (1918)  having  shaken  into  her  capacious  lap 
vaster  possessions  than  ever  before,  and  also  con- 
firmed her  naval  supremacy. 

This  bound-bursting  spirit  of  the  Elizabethan 
era,  which  our  poet  profoundly  felt  and  appro- 
priated, and  which  gave  to  him  the  sovereign  bent 
of  his  genius,  may  here  be  noted  in  two  of  its  chief 
manifestations.  The  first  is  England's  leap  from 
her  confining  shores  into  the  wide  Ocean  which 
had  hitherto  walled  her  in  comparatively,  so  that 
she  turned  her  most  defiant  limit  into  the  helpful 
stepping-stone  to  her  new  marine  world-character 
and  its  supremacy.     She  became  mankind's  chief 


THE    AGR.  103 

seaman,  and  enacted  the  grand  symbolic  deed  of 
her  young  career  in  the  circumnavigation  of  the 
globe  through  her  sovereign  sailor  Sir  Francis 
Drake,  whom  Shakespeare  might  well  have  seen 
and  even  could  have  known.  For  Drake's  globe- 
rounding  ship  (The  Golden  Hind)  after  its  re- 
turn lay  anchored  in  the  Thames  for  several  years 
as  a  kind  of  prophetic  oracle,  and  was  visited  by 
vast  crowds,  and  even  by  Queen  Elizabeth  in  per- 
son, who  with  royal  ceremony  on  its  deck  presented 
to  its  earth-girdling  Captain  his  titled  dignity  of 
knighthood.  There  is  little  doubt  that  the  poet's 
famed  and  far-visioned  utterance  (in  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream)  took  its  first  ideal  suggestion  from 
Drake's  real  circumterrestrial  deed,  at  whose  up- 
lifting view  the  rapt  Shakespearian  spirit,  masked 
as  little  winged  Puck,  not  so  much  tells  as  fore- 
tells: ''I'll  put  a  girdle  round  the  earth  in  forty 
minutes."  Drake's  space-voyage  was  fulfilled  in 
some  three  years,  but  Shakespeare's  (or  Puck's) 
time-voyage  seems  just  now  to  be  fulfilling  itself, 
after  the  lapse  of  three  centuries  and  more,  in  tele- 
graph and  telephone.  We  may  well  hold,  with 
Elze  for  instance,  that  Shakespeare  trod  the  deck 
of  this  wonder-ship  of  Drake,  and  felt  the  real 
fact  propelling  his  imagination  to  its  farthest 
reaches.  For  we  have  already  marked  how  the 
poet*  takes  the  solidest  reality  as  the  substructure 
to  his  loftiest  poetic  temple,  and  how  he  needs  the 
actual  experience  of  the  fact,  out  of  which  he  is  to 
rise  to  his  ideal  creation.    From  this  point  of  view 


104  SHAKESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

the  Tempest  may  be  conceived  as  an  idealized 
drama  of  English  navigation,  and  the  poet  finally 
reveals  himself  as  the  prophet  of  his  people.  In- 
deed nothing  can  be  more  natural  than  that  young 
Shakespeare  was  himself  a  sailor  for  a  while  during 
the  crest  of  the  excitement  over  the  approaching 
Armada.  Of  course  he  would  enlist  on  the  spot 
to  meet  the  moment,  and  then  drop  back  into  civil 
life  when  the  crisis  was  over.  Or  if  he  did  not 
enlist  he  was  like  to  be  seized  by  the  King's  press. 
Another  manifestation  of  England's  bound- 
bursting  spirit  during  Shakespeare's  younger  days 
was  her  attempt  to  colonize  the  new  world  overseas. 
The  year  before  he  set  out  for  London,  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  had  sent  an  expedition  which  discovered 
and  named  Virginia,  though  the  first  successful 
settlement  was  made  more  than  two  decades  later 
(in  1607)  at  Jamestown.  Thus  England's  per- 
sistent struggle  to  colonize  herself,  that  is,  to  re- 
create herself  in  new  communities  and  new  states 
on  a  new  continent,  pulsed  through  the  some 
twenty  most  active  and  creative  years  of  Shake- 
speare 's  life.  Wherein  we  may  glimpse  a  deep  cor- 
respondence between  the  poet 's  own  spirit  and  that 
of  his  country,  both  being  so  mightily  reproductive 
of  themselves  in  their  best.  For  England's  politi- 
cal institutions,  truly  her  greatest  and  worthiest 
achievement,  were  being  reproduced  in  young  fresh 
forms,  and  transmitted  to  the  rising  futurity.  It 
was  indeed  her  New  Birth,  her  institutional  Re- 
nascence, of  which  her  greatest  poet  drank  at  its 


TEE    AGE.  105 

first  upgush  out  of  the  folk-soul,  and  which  he 
transmuted  into  its  noblest  wording,  into  its  truly 
universal  utterance,  so  that  we  are  reading  him 
now  with  an  ever-renewing  delight  and  instruction, 
from  the  Atlantic  across  the  Continent  to  the 
Pacific. 

Nor  should  we  ever  let  lapse  from  our  mind, 
while  dwelling  upon  this  institutional  Renascence 
whose  progeny  is  largely  the  free  states  and  peoples 
of  North  America,  the  cotemporaneous  cultural 
Renascence,  the  fresh  genesis  of  the  old  Mediter- 
ranean civilization  and  its  expression  in  art  and 
literature,  which  came  to  Shakespeare  and  to  Eng- 
land chiefly  through  Italy.  In  fact  these  two 
grand  Renascences  of  Shakespeare's  time  are  ulti- 
mately one,  being  one  mighty  upburst  of  the 
Genius  of  the  Age,  or  if  you  like  better,  one  colos- 
sal downpour  of  the  World-Spirit  through  two 
channels  welling  over  into  the  garden  of  human 
culture,  which  it  causes  to  bloom  afresh  in  another 
new  world-inflorescence. 

Still  there  was  an  element  of  perennial  conflict 
in  both  these  manifestations  of  the  Elizabethan 
era,  for  both  its  navigating  and  colonizing  onsets 
over  the  seas  collided  with  the  claims  of  Spain. 
When  the  English  navigators  sailed  out  into  the 
free  Ocean,  they  were  already  encroaching  upon 
what  the  Spaniard  had  seized  and  pre-empted  as 
his  own,  just  his  watery  Main.  And  the  first 
English  settlers  at  Jamestown,  or  even  at  Ply- 
mouth, were  regarded  as  trespassers  by  Spain  and 


106  SHAKESPEAHE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

also  by  Rome,  whose  papal  authority  had  con- 
ferred the  right  of  possessing  the  New  World  upon 
Latin  peoples.  From  this  point  of  view  the  history 
of  Anglo-Saxon  America  is  the  record  of  a  con- 
tinual transgression  and  defiance  of  the  Latin- 
Spanish  right  of  tenure.  Thus  that  old  Eliza- 
bethan Armada  battle  was  a  germinal  conflict  re- 
producing itself  through  the  centuries  till  just  now, 
and  it  seems  not  yet  over.  For  is  not  the  forward- 
pushing  limit-surmounting  Anglo-Saxon  (so  we 
may  label  him)  to-day  facing  the  Spanish  heir 
along  the  Rio  Grande  boundary,  with  frequent 
clashes  and  mutual  reprisals?  It  looks  as  if  the 
Armada  duel,  after  more  than  three  hundred  years 
of  fighting,  has  not  yet  fought  itself  out  to  a  finish. 
Our  interest  here  is  to  note  that  Shakespeare,  now 
the  far-echoing  voice  of  Angio-Saxondom,  was 
present  at  and  shared  in  the  very  birth-throes  of 
this  long  political  and  cultural  struggle,  and  shows 
in  his  writ  many  traces  of  such  an  epochal  experi- 
ence of  his  country  and  of  himself,  especially  in  his 
English  Histories. 

And  still  another  phase  of  this  many-sided 
genetic  age  we  must  remark  here :  the  inner  moral 
upheaval  and  renovation  of  the  English  soul 
through  Puritanism.  This  movement  was  already 
in  its  first  early  tidal  sweep  when  Shakespeare 
reached  out  for  London.  He,  as  the  universal  child 
of  his  time,  could  not  help  sharing  deeply  in  the 
grand  national  revival  of  conscience,  which  was 
the  chief  Puritanic  mission,  also  a  great  Renascence. 


TEE    AGE.  107 

His  supposed  hostile  attitude  toward  Puritanism 
must  be  revised  and  corrected  in  the  light  of  his 
own  statements,  being  largely  a  mistaken  inference 
of  modern  critics.  We  shall  find  him  in  his  earliest 
plays  already  turning  over  the  problem  of  con- 
science, which  becomes  the  all-dominating  question 
in  Hamlet,  whose  fate  lurks  in  the  clash  of  its  col- 
liding sides. 

Still  another  mighty  upburst  of  the  Elizabethan 
era  must  be  here  glanced  at :  its  gigantic  push  for 
self-expression.  This  tendency  took  a  number  of 
forms,  which  need  not  here  be  recounted,  except 
the  one  which  culminates  in  Shakespeare,  namely 
the  drama.  The  soul  of  the  Age  turned  dramatic 
in  utterance ;  the  World-Spirit  then  spoke  English, 
and  took  to  making  plays  for  his  own  highest  self- 
revelation.  Never  before  but  once  in  the  course  of 
European  History  has  the  drama  risen  to  be  the 
supreme  vehicle  of  the  time's  loftiest  message; 
that  was  long  ago  in  antique  Athens  after  her 
heroic  deeds  in  the  Persian  War.  Often  the  query 
about  the  Elizabethan  era  haunts  us:  why  was  it 
that  just  then,  for  once  and  for  all,  during  not 
more  than  forty  or  fifty  years,  the  English  mind, 
the  national  consciousness  itself  spoke  dramatically 
in  its  supreme  inspiration,  and  has  never  been  able 
to  do  so  again,  in  spite  of  desperate  attempts  at 
revivals.  The  Genius  of  History  seems  for  a  few 
years  to  turn  dramatist  through  Shakespeare, 
whose  far  inferior  fellow-playwrights  often  catch 
unique  whiffs  of  the  same  supernal  effluence. 


108  SB  AX'S  STB  ABE '8   LIFE-DBAMA 

Whatever  be  the  answer,  we  find  our  best  reward 
in  taking  up  and  communing  with  these  highest 
moments  of  the  age's  best  spirits,  who  can  bring 
us  to  share  in  a  mightily  creative  epoch.  It  was  a 
world-bearing  crisis,  springing  up  at  the  confluence 
of  the  two  great  streams  of  Europe's  two  civiliza- 
tions; one  was  the  moral  and  religious  Renascence 
rising  out  of  Germany  and  the  North,  the  other 
was  the  cultural  and  literary  Renascence  rising  out 
of  Italy  and  the  South.  Then  both  came  together 
and  married  and  created  their  greatest  offspring  in 
Elizabethan  England,  which  furnished  the  third 
element,  the  English  institutional  life  and  spirit. 

Into  the  throbbing  center  of  such  a  creative 
period  young  Shakespeare  plunged  when  he  quit 
his  Stratford  home  for  the  nation's  capital.  Very 
temperamentally  he  was  at  first  dazed  by  the 
mighty  phenomenon,  and  had  to  take  his  voyage  of 
self-discovery. 

VIII. 

Drifting. 

Here  we  come  upon  another  intervening  tract 
of  years  in  Shakespeare's  life  which  is  a  blank  as 
far  as  documents  are  concerned.  The  interval  be- 
tween his  setting  out  from  home  in  1585,  and  his 
getting  anchored  in  his  theatrical  vocation  about 
1588 — that  stretch  of  inquisitive  young-manhood 
from  twenty-one  to  twenty-four — must  have  been 
very  full  and  buoyant  in  acquiring  a  multifarious 


DBIFTING^  109 

personal  experience  of  the  city,  of  the  nation,  and 
indeed  of  the  world,  for  London  had  already  be- 
come the  great  world-city  of  Northern  Europe, 
with  a  large  foreign  population.  Some  of  these 
strangers  Shakespeare  has  drawn  from  life,  like  the 
French  Doctor  Caius,  and  the  Spanish  Don 
Armado,  both  of  them  grotesques  speaking  English. 
Of  course  his  dramas  luxuriate  in  Italian  charac- 
ters, of  whom  many  are  simply  Englishmen  with 
Italian  names.  For  Italy  was  then  the  veritable 
Holy  Land  of  the  age's  culture,  to  which  all 
Europe  made  pilgrimages,  not  excepting  Shake- 
speare himself,  ideally,  and  also  r.eally  we  think. 

Hence  we  insert  at  this  point  what  may  be 
called  the  poet's  drifting  Triennium,  a  time  of  un- 
anchored,  miscellaneous,  far-ranging  but  very  eager 
and  busy  acquisition,  in  which  he  saw  not  only  the 
day-side  of  the  great  metropolis,  but  likewise  its 
night-life,  whereof  nearly  every  play  of  his  fur- 
nishes some  first-hand  glimpses,  if  we  peep  under 
its  mask  just  a  little.  Shakespeare's  business  now 
is  to  test  all  the  upbubbling  opportunities  along 
his  path;  he  peers  down  into  every  vista  of  the 
future  as  it  shifts  under  his  eye;  in  such  a  pene- 
trating search  we  conceive  him  trying  to  find  him- 
self and  to  hear  his  true  call  in  life. 

It  it  not  known  exactly  when  Shakespeare  reached 
London,  nor  by  what  means — afoot,  on  horseback, 
or  by  wheeled  vehicle.  Nor  is  it  settled  how  long 
he  loitered  on  the  way  or  what  deflections  he  may 
have  made  from  the  main  path.    Report  runs  that 


110  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

he  was  a  soldier  for  a  while,  and  it  seems  likely 
that  he  had  some  military  experience  during  these 
stirring  times  when  all  England  was  drilling  to 
meet  the  Spanish  Armada.  Moreover  in  the  His- 
torical Plays  especially  he  shows  acquaintance  with 
**the  right  form  of  war",  which  could  be  drawn 
only  from  experience.  His  knowledge  of  naviga- 
tion has  been  recognized  by  expert  seamen.  In- 
deed he,  being  a  young  fellow  just  of  the  right  age, 
could  hardly  escape  service  of  some  sort,  as  a  sol- 
dier or  sailor  or  indeed  both.  Another  report 
makes  him  a  country  schoolmaster  who  scattered 
his  light  in  dark  places  along  his  leisurely  journey 
to  the  capital.  Thus  he  may  have  enacted  his  own. 
pedagogue  Pinch,  possibly  named  from  the  pinch 
of  necessity,  still  to-day  not  unknown  to  that  class 
of  wage-earners. 

At  last,  however,  he  gets  to  London,  or  posssibly 
he  pushes  to  that  center  at  once,  and  thence  scat- 
ters himself.  Trudging  along  the  Uxbridge  road 
we  conceive  him  in  some  excitement  at  the  view, 
and  also  in  some  anxiety  about  the  future,  as  he 
enters  the  archway  of  Newgate  into  the  capital 
city  then  containing  rather  more  than  100,000  in- 
habitants, according  to  trustworthy  reckoners. 
Again  report  has  busied  itself  with  the  question: 
to  what  occupation  did  he  first  set  hand?  Some 
say  he  was  clerk  for  a  while  to  an  attorney,  in 
which  employment  was  learned  his  knowledge  of 
the  law.  Not  a  necessary  supposition,  for  Shake- 
speare all  his  life  from  youth  up  lived  in  the  midst 


DBIFTING.  Ill 

of  litigation,  his  father's,  his  own,  and  his  town's 
— Stratford,  indeed,  bore  the  name  of  being  a  liti- 
gous  community.  For  that  matter,  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  people  everywhere  are  on  the  whole  lawsuit- 
loving  and  also  legal-minded — which  they  have  to 
be  in  order  to  work  their  free  institutions.  Shake- 
speare undoubtedly  reflects  this  general  charac- 
teristic of  his  folk,  but  hardly  more ;  indeed  we  are 
warned  by  lynx-eyed  lawyers  that  there  is  a  good 
measure  of  bad  law  in  Shakespeare,  who  certainly 
did  not  expect  in  his  hearers  the  legal  precision  of 
the  Lord  Chancellor. 

It  may  well  be  supposed  that  the  Stratford  new- 
comer first  hunted  up  some  of  his  fellow-townsmen 
who  were  located  in  London.  One  of  these  was 
Richard  Field,  a  successful  printer,  whose  father 
was  a  neighbor  of  the  Shakespeare  family  at  Strat- 
ford. Friendly  relations  were  now  established  be- 
tween the  sons,  as  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  Field 
afterwards  printed  Shakespeare's  two  poems,  Venus 
and  Adonis  (in  1593),  and  Lucrece  (in  1594).  It 
is  likely  that  Shakespeare,  being  taskless,  may  have 
done  some  odd  jobs  about  the  printing  office,  and 
observed  and  possibly  practised  some  of  the  pro- 
cesses of  typography,  of  which  he  shows  traces  of 
knowledge  in  his  plays.  But  it  never  could  have 
been  with  him  a  serious  occupation;  the  urge  of 
his  genius  would  not  let  him  stay  long  from  his 
true  life-calling.  Accordingly  we  have  to  imagine 
him  as  seizing  the  first  least  chance  he  had  of  get- 
ting his  grip  on  the  stage,  which  is  now  becoming 


112  SRAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

England 's  highest  self-expression,  and  also  his  own. 
With  good  reason,  therefore,  tradition  sends  him 
to  the  theater,  yea  down  to  the  very  bottom  of  the 
theatrical  ladder,  as  if  to  make  the  more  vivid  his 
rise  to  the  topmost  sovereignty  of  his  vocation. 
From  Sir  William  D'Avenant,  Shakespeare's  god- 
son, also  rumored  to  be  of  still  nearer  sonship,  is 
derived  the  report  that  the  dramatist's  first  work 
at  the  play-house  was  ''the  taking  care  of  the 
gentlemen's  horses  who  came  to  the  play",  and 
that  he  organized  a  guild  of  horse-holders  known  as 
' '  Shakespeare 's  boys ' '.  But  he  could  not  stay  out- 
side long  with  his  ability  and  his  affability ;  soon  he 
gets  inside  as  ''prompter's  attendant"  according 
to  Malone.  His  next  step  was  to  become  an  actor 
on  the  stage,  doubtless  at  first  after  a  small  way. 
Already  in  Stratford  he  could  well  have  taken  his 
little  turn  at  private  theatricals,  perhaps  then  less 
uncommon  than  to-day.  But  now  at  London  he 
had  the  chance  not  only  to  see  the  greatest  his- 
trionic genius  of  the  age  but  also  to  unfold  with 
him  into  his  art — Richard  Burbage,  who  was  just 
rising  to  fame.  The  influence  of  Burbage  was 
highly  formative  upon  Shakespeare,  who  had  to 
turn  into  grandeur  of  speech  Burbage 's  grand  pos- 
sibilities of  personation.  The  poet  and  the  actor 
would  naturally  co-operate,  to  the  advantage  of 
both.  Very  famous  was  Burbage 's  representation 
of  Richard  the  Third,  but  he  probably  reached  his 
supreme  histrionic  fulfilment  in  the  poet's  tragic 
heroes — Hamlet,    Lear,    Othello.      When    Burbage 


DBIFTINOr  113 

studied  his  great  roles,  we  imagine  Shakespeare 
often  to  have  been  present,  pen  in  hand,  jotting 
down  new  suggestive  strokes  to  his  text.  Indeed 
one  may  well  think  that  Burbage's  fully  developed 
genius  is  deeply  stamped  on  Shakespeare's  Second 
or  Tragic  Period. 

But  these  years  of  drifting,  aimless  and  anchor- 
less, yet  laden  with  their  secret  discipline  and  sore, 
must  come  to  an  end.  Many  a  little  gleam  of  this 
time  and  its  peculiar  psychology  we  may  catch  in 
the  later  works  of  the  poet.  In  his  first  play 
(Comedy  of  Errors)  we  can  often  sense  a  passing 
flash  of  the  bewildering  scenes  of  a  strange  city. 
Antipholus  of  Syracuse  straying  around  foreign 
Ephesus  thus  pictures  his  feeling  of  lostness: 

I  will  go  lose  myself 
And  wander  up  and  down  to  view  the  city  .    . 
I  to  the  world  am  like  a  drop  of  water 
That  in  the  ocean  seeks  another  drop, 
Who,  falling  there  to  find  his  fellow  forth, 
Unseen,  inquisitive,  confounds  himself 

quite  to  the  point  of  losing  his  self -identity.  And 
later  the  same  character  will  cry  out :  *  *  And  here 
we  wander  in  illusions ' ' — which  is  just  the  present 
training  of  the  poet. 

Similarly  we  may  overhear  Shakespeare  telling 
on  himself  in  a  much  later  and  maturer  drama 
(Antony  and  Cleopatra)  when  the  Roman  hero 
speaks  out  with  a  thrill  in  his  words: 


114  SHAEESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

And  all  alone 
To-night  we'll  wander  through  the  streets 

and  note 
The  qualities  of  people. 

Can  we  in  this  passage  avoid  imaging  William 
Shakespeare,  the  arch  man-builder  in  his  ardent 
search  for  human  material  on  the  streets  of  Lon- 
don, in  the  very  act  of  appropriating  unto  his 
future  use  ''the  qualities  of  people"? 

Of  course  the  great  national  or  rather  world- 
historical  event  of  the  Elizabethan  era  was  the 
menace  and  the  defeat  of  the  Spanish  Armada, 
over  which  the  tense  public  excitement  surged 
through  this  whole  drifting  Triennium  of  Shake- 
speare, and  made  him  drift  all  the  more.  Such 
a  prolonged,  massive,  overwhelming  experience 
swaying  him  and  all  England  from  above  as  it 
were,  caused  him  to  mark  well  the  pulse-beat  of 
the  World's  History,  and  brought  him  into  com- 
munion with  the  Spirit  of  the  Age,  which  gave 
smiting  evidence  of  its  presence  in  the  Armada  vic- 
tory. Many  a  throb  of  this  epoch-begetting  na- 
tional deed  we  can  feel  recurring  underneath  his 
whole  dramatic  career.  An  early  note  of  the  tri- 
umphant outcome  we  may  hear  in  the  play  of 
King  John  (III.  4.): 

So  by  a  roaring  tempest  on  the  flood 

A  whole  armado  of  connected  sail 

Is  scattered  and  disjoined  from  fellowship. 

And  in  a  passage  written  many  years  later  we  may 


DBIFTING.  115 

spy  a  reminiscence  of  England's  desperate  wrestle 
at  the  point  of  fate : 

Your  ships  are  not  well  manned; 
Your  mariners  are  muleters,  reapers,  people 
Ingrossed  by  swift  impress — 

so  warns  Enobarbus,  more  like  an  Englishman 
than  a  Roman.  Possibly  Shakespeare  himself  had 
been  nipped  by  the  press-gang,  to  judge  by  his  re- 
peated unfriendly  allusions.  Even  Falstaff,  not 
very  tender  of  conscience,  can  reproach  himself: 
*'I  have  misused  the  King's  press  damnably.'* 
And  the  following  outburst  (Third  Henry  VI. 
Act  2,  sc.  5)  may  be  taken  as  an  early  reminder  of 
himself  on  the  part  of  the  poet : 

Oh  heavy  times  begetting  such  events! 
From  London  by  the  King  I  was  pressed 
forth— 

perchance  just  I,  this  William  Shakespeare,  a 
young  fellow  from  the  country  strolling  the  streets 
of  the  capital,  was  drafted  for  the  lowering  crisis. 
Anyhow  he  saw  the  thing  done,  doubtless  more 
than  once. 

IX. 

Anchored. 

Again  we  have  to  construe  out  of  the  hand-writ- 
ing of  the  time  an  important  occurrence  or  rather 
node  in  the  Life-drama  of  the  poet,  which  we  can- 


116  SHAEESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

not  find  recorded  in  any  other  sort  of  script.  This 
is  the  cessation  of  his  epoch  of  drifting,  when  he 
stabilizes  himself  and  settles  down  into  his  perma- 
nent vocation.  During  the  year  1588,  as  nearly 
as  we  can  make  the  date  out,  this  pivotal  transition 
was  in  the  main  accomplished,  even  if  it  had  a 
before  and  an  after.  Behold  him,  then,  wheeling 
into  the  highway  of  his  great  future,  which  seems 
to  have  the  magic  power  of  always  growing  greater 
with  the  lapse  of  the  centuries. 

What  could  have  caused  this  new  turn  in  the 
destiny  of  the  man?  I  think  that  we  can  discern 
three  co-inciding  events  which  fell  together  into 
this  year  and  lit  upon  William  Shakespeare,  lead- 
ing him,  hurtling  him,  or  perchance  gently  caress- 
ing him  into  his  future  career.  These  three  events 
we  shall  set  down  in  a  brief  jotting. 

1.  It  was  in  the  year  1588  that  the  Armada 
made  its  Quixotic  assault,  was  overwhelmed  chiefly 
by  the  sea's  windmills,  and  practicallj^  destroyed. 
When  this  long-lowering  menace  had  cleared  away, 
not  only  England,  but  Northern  Europe,  we  may 
say  Civilization  itself  felt  a  great  release,  a  new 
freedom.  Till  that  universal  terror  was  removed, 
no  Englishman  dared  deem  his  outlook  settled  for 
life.  And  how  could  William  Shakespeare,  still  a 
young  man,  think  of  fixing  himself  in  a  new  call- 
ing while  that  Spanish  fate  hung  over  him  and  his 
nation?  Very  rapid  was  the  passing  of  the  storm 
after  it  once  broke ;  .and  though  the  King  of  Spain 
threatened    England    with    fresh    Armadas,    they 


ANCnOBED.  117 

never  again  caused  serious  anxiety.  So  we  con- 
ceive that  our  poet,  along  with  his  people  and  age, 
received  a  grand  liberation  which  enabled  him  to 
turn  back  to  his  own  individual  work  in  life,  ac- 
cording to  the  bent  of  his  genius.  What  was  that 
work?  For  now  he  first  felt  himself  free  to  run 
his  own  life-line. 

2.  The  Elizabethan  era  had  already  begun  to 
find  its  self-expression  supremely  in  one  form,  the 
dramatic,  as  we  have  before  emphasized.  Now  this 
v-^as  Shakespeare's  native  form  of  utterance,  not 
yet  developed,  but  lustily  struggling  to  be  born. 
Hence  he  found  in  the  theatre  of  the  time  the  con- 
genial place  for  his  evolution.  A  number  of  ablo 
but  preluding  dramatists  had  already  broken  the 
v/ay,  and  with  these  he  became  intergrown,  having 
formed  an  early  personal  acquaintance.  Thus  he 
breathed  the  very  atmosphere  of  his  age 's  germinal 
art,  passing  rapidly  through  its  embryology  to 
nascence  and  to  maturity. 

3.  In  this  general  dramatic  upburst  rises  a 
great  personality  with  his  one  greatest  work  of  the 
period,  which  work  appeared  in  its  completeness 
this  same  year  (1588).  The  mighty  drama  of 
Tamburlane — mighty  in  size,  in  speech,  and  in  con- 
ception— was  the  theatrical  wonder  as  well  as  the 
revolutionary  document  of  the  time;  defiant  of 
tradition  in  every  direction,  especially  of  that  of 
the  old  stage.  Here  we  behold  Marlowe  as  the 
grand  precursor  and  primal  trainer  of  Shake- 
speare. 


118  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

We  may  well  suppose  that  the  hitherto  drifting 
genius  became  fully  anchored  inside  the  task  of  the 
theater  when  Marlow's  Tamhurlane  had  been  pre- 
sented in  both  its  Parts.  It  thundered  to  him  what 
he  was  to  do  with  himself,  evoking  a  response  from 
his  deepest  consciousness.  That  epochal  drama  must 
have  produced  a  creative  impression  upon  Shake- 
speare, then  twenty-four  years  old,  as  he  watched 
its  power  over  the  audience,  and  also  pondered  its 
poetic  text.  It  could  not  help  giving  an  enormous 
impulse  to  his  productive  ambition.  Doubtless  he 
became  acquainted  with  Marlowe  himself,  and  they 
began  to  collaborate  together.  Such  was  the  new 
and  greatest  training  school  of  Shakespeare's  ap- 
prenticeship— the  genius  of  Christopher  Marlowe, 
with  whom  he  will  remain  for  years,  in  fact  till  the 
latter 's  tragic  taking  off  from  life's  own  stage. 

These  were  the  two  mighty  personalities  with 
whom  Shakespeare  came  into  living  contact  during 
the  first  four  or  five  years  of  his  London  discipline 
— Burbage  the  actor  and  Marlowe  the  poet.  Other 
writers  doubtless  influenced  him,  such  as  Kyd, 
Green,  Lyly — all  belonging  to  the  new  order  and 
its  dramatic  expression. 

Thus  Shakespeare  gets  located  in  London,  and 
has  found  his  life's  supreme  vocation,  being  ready 
to  take  his  first  leap  into  his  own  living  drama,  or 
perhaps  it  was  a  slow  transition.  At  this  point  we 
are  enforced  to  look  back  and  to  survey  his  mental 
equipment,  especially  the  intellectual  material 
which  he  brought  from  Stratford. 


ANCHOEED.  119 

First  was  the  means  for  tapping  the  lore  of  the 
Renascence,  the  age's  great  cultural  movement. 
This,  as  we  have  seen,  was  what  had  been  specially 
imparted  to  him  in  the  Stratford  School,  and  will 
weave  through  and  tint  poetically  his  whole  dra- 
matic career.  It  is  clear  that  he  kept  up  his  study- 
habit,  and  never  let  his  Latin  drop  from  memory, 
adding  to  it  some  knowledge  of  two  Romanic  mod- 
ern tongues,  Italian  and  French.  He  knew  and 
could  employ  Greek  Mythology,  especially  in  its 
Roman  paramythical  form,  which  he  had  found 
mainly  in  Ovid.  Then  his  brain  was  a  storehouse 
of  popular  legend,  not  gained  from  books  so  much 
as  from  hearsay  and  direct  life ;  we  may  call  it  the 
Anglo-Saxon  Mythus,  which  he  employs  in  nu- 
merous ways,  not  only  in  passing  allusion  and 
illustration,  but  as  an  overworld  of  spirits,  fairies, 
ghosts.  We  may  whisper  here  that  this  mythical 
element  is  usually  neglected  by  our  worthy  com.- 
mentators,  but  Shakespeare's  i:)oetic  personality 
cannot  be  fully  grasped  without  it ;  he  deeply  par- 
took of  it,  inside  him  it  lay  ever  active  and  organic, 
and  was  not  something  on  the  outside,  dragged  in 
by  sheer  force  for  the  sake  of  external  ornament. 

We  must  reaffirm  our  belief  that  he  brought 
along  not  a  few  attempts  at  verse,  poetic  materials 
which  he  will  draw  upon  often  in  the  future. 
Recollect  that  he  was  twenty-one  years  old  when  he 
set  out  for  London;  it  were  impossible  for  a  poetic 
genius  to  remain  dormant  during  its  springtime. 
Also  many  an  experience  of  travel  and  of  nature  he 


120  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DRAMA. 

had  gathered  at  Stratford,  and  will  transmute  into 
his  coming  dramatic  expression;  this  personal  ex- 
perience is  his  true  autobiography,  not  indeed  sep- 
arately set  forth  in  its  own  shape,  but  disguised 
under  its  dramatic  mask,  which  was  the  poet's 
native  method  of  revealing  himself.  To  be  sure, 
this  subtle  self-revelation  the  reader  must  unmask 
and  sleuth  through  all  its  devious  windings  and 
concealments,  if  he  wishes  to  commune  directly 
with  the  personality  of  the  poet. 

It  should  never  quit  the  mind  that  Shakespeare's 
love  of  the  Mythus  was  inborn,  a  constituent  part 
of  his  nature,  which  always  streams  through 
his  utterance  in  one  form  or  other.  Indeed  Shake- 
speare himself  has  been  called  a  Mythus,  which 
statement  about  him  is  true  enough  if  conceived  in 
the  right  way.  His  total  deed  has  an  epical 
grandeur,  and  builds  itself  into  one  monumental 
poem  of  which  he  is  the  hero,  and  in  whose  expres- 
sion he  shows  himself  the  voice  of  the  Gods  or  of 
the  Eternal  Powers.  Hence  his  biography,  if  it 
presents  him  truthfully  and  wholly,  will  not  fail  to 
interweave  in  its  own  right  a  mythical  or  imagina- 
tive element,  as  the  very  essence  of  the  creative 
poet.  But  this  must  consciously  tell  what  it  is. 
unmasking  its  self-identity. 

Here,  then,  we  let  the  curtain  fall  upon  the  Pro- 
logue of  the  poet's  Life-drama  in  which  we  have 
sought  to  set  forth  the  main  features  of  his  early 
education  and  experience,  till  his  flight  from  his 
confining   life   at   little   Stratford   into   the   great 


ANCnOEED.  121 

world  of  London,  where  he  is  fully  to  discover  him- 
self in  and  through  his  new  dramatic  vocation. 
Accordingly  we  are  now  to  pass  into  the  literal 
drama  of  this  Life-drama  of  his,  which  is  next  to 
be  witnessed  unfolding  out  of  its  many  separate 
constituents  into  a  full-rounded  entirety  of  human 
achievement.  Here,  then,  closes  our  Prologue,  for 
whose  farewell  words  we  may  again  cite  the  dra- 
matist's own  brief  blazon  of  himself,  proclaiming 
his  art  to  be  as  universal  as  life  itself: 

All  the  world's  a  stage, 
And  all  the  men  and  women  merely  players. 

Indeed  he  calls  the  world  the  ** universal  theatre'* 
in  the  play  (As  You  Like  It)  from  which  the  fore- 
going extract  is  taken,  intoning  his  pathetic  words 
with  the  soulful  music  of  consolation: 

We  are  not  all  alone  unhappy : 
This  wide  and  universal  theatre 
Presents  more  woeful  pageants  than  the  scene 
In  which  we  play  in. 


5It|P  ffinnhon  Pan-brama 

Preliminary  Survey. 

Thus  we  seek  to  unite  into  one  comprehensive 
word  with  its  corresponding  thought  all  the  plays 
of  William  Shakespeare,  thirty  six  of  them,  in 
which  his  Life-drama  completely  dramatizes  itself 
from  start  to  fulfilment.  An  unusual  word  but 
much  needed  for  clarity  and  completeness  of  com- 
prehension is  this  Pan-drama,  which  is  always  to 
call  up  in  the  mind  and  to  enforce  Shakespeare's 
dramatic  achievement  as  a  whole,  or  the  concept  of 
all  his  dramas  taken  together.  Moreover  their  pro- 
duction and  representation  belong  to  the  one  local- 
ity, London,  and  show  the  poet's  evolution  for 
nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century. 
•  I.  Now  this  London  Pan-drama  has  met  with  a 
stroke  of  exceeding  good-luck :  it  was  printed  seven 
years  after  the  poet 's  death  in  a  single  book  known 
to  all  the  world  as  the  First  Folio,  whose  date  is 
(122) 


PBELIMINABY    SURVEY.  123 

1623.  Probably,  if  the  question  could  be  submitted 
to  an  election,  this  volume  would  receive  more 
votes,  choosing  it  the  sovereign  of  greatest  Eu- 
ropean books,  than  any  other  writing.  Two  actor- 
friends,  John  Heminge  and  Henry  Condell,  took 
charge  of  the  work,  and  say  of  themselves  in  their 
dedication:  ''We  have  but  collected  them  [the 
plays]  and  done  an  office  to  the  dead;"  whereupon 
these  editors  still  more  strongly  stress  the  personal 
side:  ''without  ambition  either  of  self -profit  or 
fame;  only  to  keep  the  memory  of  so  worthy  a 
friend  and  fellow  alive,  as  was  our  Shakespeare,'* 
have  they  done  their  labor  of  love.  In  such  state- 
ments we  catch  an  echo  of  Shakespeare's  per- 
sonality, as  it  influenced  his  nearest  friends,  and 
was  held  in  memory  and  gratitude  after  his 
decease. 

It  is  also  worth  while  to  note  how  these  two 
editors,  though  actors  by  profession  and  theatre- 
owners,  make  their  ultimate  appeal  not  to  the  acted  . 
but  to  the  read  Shakespeare,  as  if  they  foresaw  that 
the  future  of  their  poet  lay  with  his  vast  reading 
multitude  more  than  with  his  theatre-going  con- 
stituency. Their  exhortation  still  holds  good  of  his 
book:  "it  is  yours  that  read  him."  And  their 
faith  in  his  eternal  portion  seems  proclaimed :  ' '  for 
his  wit  can  no  more  lie  hid,  than  it  could  be  lost. ' ' 
They  also  emphasize  that  Shakespeare  is  not  gotten 
with  a  single  perusal:  "read  him,  therefore;  and 
again,  and  again. ' '  They  also  imply  that  he  is  not 
so  easy,  for  if,  after  several  trials,  ' '  you  do  not  like 


124  SEAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

him,  surely  you  are  in  some  manifest  danger  not 
to  understand  him. ' '  And  what  is  stranger,  they 
suggest  even  guidance  in  the  study  of  him:  ''we 
leave  you  to  other  of  his  friends,  whom  if  you  need, 
can  be  your  guides."  A  far-off  hint,  one  may 
fancy,  of  our  modern  Shakespeare  clubs,  with  their 
guides!  Still  the  best  way  is  that  ''you  can  lead 
yourselves,  and  others,"  for  every  reader  must 
finally  be  his  own  interpreter.  ' '  And  such  readers 
we  wish  him, ' '  is  their  farewell  word  to  their  Book. 
And  we  believe  that  this  is  Shakespeare 's  own  view 
of  his  whole  work  finally  glimpsed  from  his  retire- 
ment at  Stratford. 

From  the  drift  of  this  prefatory  address  ' '  To  the 
great  Variety  of  Readers",  as  it  stands  in  front  of 
the  First  Folio,  we  have  the  right  to  infer  that  the 
grand  Shakespearian  reading-army  of  the  ages  had 
already  given  evidence  of  itself  in  contrast  with  the 
theatre-going  public.  This  is  not  saying  that  the 
histrionic  side  of  Shakespeare  is  to  be  neglected; 
the  drama  is  the  art-form  into  which  he  pours  his 
greatest,  and,  besides,  has  its  own  independent 
worth  as  well  as  right  of  existence.  Still  we  are 
to  note  here  that  these  professional  actors  of  Shake- 
speare, who  are  also  his  intimate  personal  friends, 
recognize  that  the  poet's  deeper  appeal  is  to  the 
individual  reader  communing  with  himself  and  free 
of  the  attractions  and  distractions  of  the  stage. 
That  such  was  also  the  view  of  the  poet  himself, 
we  shall  find  suggested  in  a  number  of  his  plays. 
Already  Hamlet  speaks  of  two  Hamlets,  the  one 


PBELIMINAEY    SUBVET.  125 

who  is  or  may  be  staged,  and  the  other  who  exists 
beyond  the  stage,  the  showable  and  the  unshowable 
man,  or  the  outer  and  the  inner  of  him: 

these  indeed  seem, 
For  they  are  actions  that  a  man  might  play; 
But  I  have  that  within  which  passeth  show. 
These  but  the  trappings  and  the  suits  of  woe. 

So  even  the  theatre-loving  Hamlet  declares  that 
there  is  a  something  in  him  beyond  the  external 
representation.  Still  just  that  deeper  internal 
Hamlet  is  what  the  Hamlet  drama  has  to  impart 
ultimately  to  its  reader. 

The  appearance  of  this  First  Folio  of  collected 
Shakespeare  was  evidently  regarded  as  a  supreme 
literary  event  at  the  time.  The  Book  revealing 
the  total  poet  was  hailed  as  a  grand  new  epiphany 
of  him,  far  more  significant  than  any  of  his  single 
dramas  hitherto  acted  or  printed.  Prefixed  to  the 
First  Folio  is  a  little  poetic  fascicle  of  eight  lines 
by  a  nameless  bard  who  celebrates  the  Book  as  the 
dramatist's  re-entrance  after  death  into  his  new 
theatre,  the  immortal  one : 

We    thought    thee    dead,    but    this    thy 

printed  worth, 
Tells   thy    spectators,    that    thou    went'st 

but  forth 
To  enter  with  applause 

in  order  to  play  thy  eternal  role.  And  the  Eliza- 
bethan  poet   next   in   merit   to   Shakespeare,   Ben 


126  SHAKESPE  ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

Jonson,  lauds  the  Book  in  addressing  its  departed 
author : 

My  Shakespeare,  rise! 

Thou  art  a  monument  without  a  tomb, 
And  art  alive  still  while  thy  Book  doth  live, 
And  we  have  wits  to  read  and  praise  to  give. 

Evidently  Jonson,  knowing  the  man  well,  saw  him 
rise  out  of  the  grave  to  new  life  in  his  Book  some 
seven  years  after  his  entombment.  Still  another 
eotemporary  rhyme  by  Leonard  Digges  hymns  us 

.     .     .     When  that  stone  is  rent, 
And  Time  dissolves  thy  Stratford  Monument, 
Here  we  alive  shall  view  thee  still.    This  Book, 
When  brass  and  marble  fade,  shall  make 

thee  look 
Fresh  to  all  Ages. 

In  such  exaltation  Shakespeare's  friends  and  fel- 
low-actors hail  this  First  Folio  as  the  poet's  resur- 
rection to  life  everlasting,  and  posterity  has  more 
than  sealed  their  judgment  not  only  with  its  ap- 
proval but  with  a  kind  of  consecration. 

Another  point  suggested  by  these  extracts  we 
may  not  omit.  This  Book,  gigantic  as  it  is,  must 
be  finally  won  and  realized  by  the  reader  as  a 
whole  of  a  human  life,  the  completed  self-expres- 
sion of  its  author.  While  it  gives  the  world  in 
which  he  lives,  it  at  the  same  time  gives  himself  in 
his  very  selfhood ;  it  is  fundamentally  biographical. 
In  fact  it  will  be  read  at  last  as  an  autobiography, 


PBELIMINABY    SVBVET.  127 

masking  in  its  thousand  characters  one  ultimate 
colossal  personality,  which  it  is  our  problem  to 
unmask  and  to  commune  with  as  soul  to  soul. 

From  these  as  well  as  numerous  other  evidences, 
the  inference  seems  co-ercive  that  the  publication 
of  the  First  Folio  had  its  origin  and  its  early 
preparation  largely  from  Shakespeare  himself.  He 
must  have  long  known  the  lasting  value  of  his  work, 
for  it  had  been  told  him  a  thousand  times  by  the 
best  judges,  and  he  must  have  started  to  collect  and 
to  edit  his  scattered  and  incomplete  writings. 
What  else  was  he  doing  at  Stratford  during  his  last 
four  years  of  leisure,  when  he  would  naturally  be 
looking  backward  and  measuring  his  life's  full 
span  of  achievements?  Already  he  had  experi- 
enced the  enduring  import  of  the  typed  book  for 
keeping  his  work  alive  and  ever  creative.  The 
Quarto  editions  of  his  plays  never  lapsed  from 
print,  though  they  were  mostly  ''stolen  and  sur- 
reptitious copies,  maimed  and  deformed  by  the 
frauds  and  stealths  of  injurious  impostors",  as 
they  are  branded  by  the  indignant  editors  of  the 
First  Folio,  Heminge  and  Condell.  Here  we  may 
possibly  catch  an  echo  of  Shakespeare's  own  rea- 
son for  a  new  edition  of  his  already  published 
plays  ''cured  and  perfect  of  their  limbs",  which 
stolen  and  printed  plays  according  to  the  usual 
tally  amount  to  sixteen  out  of  the  thirty-six.  Then 
the  continued  demand  for  his  two  early  narrative 
poems,  Venus  and  Adonis  and  Lucrece,  which  he 
had  issued  under  his  own  name,  must  have  strongly 


128  shakesp:eaee's  life-dbama. 

impressed  him  with  the  need  of  printing  his  dramas 
also.  Not  a  few  writers  try  to  show  him  altogether 
neglectful  and  loveless  toward  the  children  of  his 
brain,  though  the  noblest  of  their  kind;  but  I 
refuse  to  believe  him  so  indifferent  to  his  own  im- 
mortality, which  he  himself  often  celebrates  in 
his  loftiest  prophetic  vision  (as  in  Sonnet  81)  : 

Your  monument  shall  be  my  gentle  verse 
Which  eyes  not  yet  created  shall  o'er-read, 
And  tongues  to  be  your  being  shall  rehearse 
When  all  the  breathers  of  this  world  are  dead ; 
You  still  shall  live — such  virtue  has  my  pen — 
Where  breath  most  breathes — e'en  in  the 
mouths  of  men. 

Now  whosoever  this  sonneted  You  may  be — 
woman,  man,  or  possibly  the  poet's  own  Genius — 
it  is  Shakespeare's  verse  which  imparts  immor- 
tality to  the  mortal  object,  be  this  a  he,  she,  or  it, 
and  his  verse  is  evidently  to  endure  through  the 
printed  page  which  eyes  unborn  ''shall  o'er-read." 

At  this  point  we  should  remember  that  the 
earlier  poetic  efforts  of  Shakespeare  other  than 
dramatic — quite  a  cluster  of  poems  epical  and 
lyrical — were  not  included  in  this  First  Folio, 
whose  title-page  announces  only  ''Comedies,  His- 
tories, and  Tragedies,  published  according  to  the 
true  original  copies."  Nor  was  this  non-dramatic 
poetry  of  Shakespeare  taken  into  the  three  later 
Folios;  it  was  also  omitted  in  the  early  editions. 
To  Edmund  Malone  is  assigned  the  credit  of  edit- 


PEELIMINABY   SURVEY.  129 

ing  and  printing  the  first  complete  edition  of  all 
Shakespeare's  works  in  1790,  embracing  both  the 
plays  and  the  poems.  Such  is  the  entire  content  of 
the  poet's  Book,  as  we  see  it  everywhere  to-day. 
Still  the  First  Folio  of  1623  is  not  only  the  main 
structure  but  the  overarching  dome  of  the  whole 
Shakespearian  edifice. 

Another  fact  about  this  unique  Book  stirs  all 
sorts  of  wonderings;  for  instance,  twenty  of  his 
plays,  some  of  them  among  his  greatest,  it  printed 
for  the  first  time.  How  was  this  precious  literary 
treasure  preserved  and  by  whom?  Did  not  all 
the  theater's  manuscripts  perish  when  the  Globe 
burned  down  very  suddenly  in  1612?  Anyhow 
Julius  Caesar  was  saved  as  well  as  Antony  and 
Cleopatra  and  also  Macbeth,  along  with  seventeen 
others,  if  not  from  literal  flames,  at  least  from  the 
fires  of  time,  since  every  trace  of  the  ''original 
copies",  which  evidently  lay  before  these  first 
editors,  has  vanished.  And  it  may  be  added  that 
the  dramas  of  one  entire  Period  of  the  poet's  life, 
five  of  them  all  together,  were  rescued  from  fate 
by  the  print  of  that  First  Folio.  These  are  the 
later  Shakespeare's  works  of  reconciliation,  the 
dramas  of  repentance  and  redemption,  the  so-called 
Romantic  Tragi-comedies. 

Enough  for  the  present  about  this  unique  World- 
Book  as  we  may  signalize  it,  whose  author  the  rare 
cotemporaneous  Ben  Jonson  had  already  acclaimed 
as  eternal,  foretelling 

He  was  not  of  an  age,  but  for  all  time! 


130  SHAEESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

This  First  Folio  has  naturally  given  rise  to 
much  spinning  of  conjecture;  it  provokes  in  its 
very  look  all  sorts  of  reflections,  and  even  of  fan- 
tasies. We  seek  to  glimpse  its  environing  condi- 
tions, and  to  follow  out  all  the  little  rills  of  sug- 
gestion, which  rise  and  stream  through  it  and 
around  it,  and  embosom  it  on  every  side.  But  es- 
pecially in  the  center  of  this  vast  and  intricate 
dramatic  web,  we  search  to  behold  the  spiritual 
visage  of  the  poet  himself  peering  through,  as  it 
were  from  behind  his  thousandfold  creations,  which 
at  times  he  seems  to  idealize  as  his  own  outflung 
shadows.  Thus,  when  he  interrogates  himself 
(Sonnet  53)  with  deep  yearning,  he  drives  his 
reader  to  make  the  same  quest  of  him : 

What  is  your  substance,  whereof  you  are  made, 
That  millions  of  strange  shadows  on  you  tend? 
And  you  but  one,  can  every  shadow  lend. 

II.  Next  comes  the  problem  of  putting  into 
some  kind  of  biographic  order  and  organisation 
this  Book,  which  as  the  one  all-including  Shake- 
spearian Pan-drama,  must  have  its  own  divisions 
and  subdivisions,  or  its  own  acts  and  scenes,  whose 
junctures  are  to  reveal  the  movement  and  also  the 
build  of  the  poet's  total  Life-drama.  Already  the 
First  Folio  in  its  table  of  contents  gives  promi- 
nently its  classification  of  itself  into  three  main 
parts — Comedies,  Histories,  and  Tragedies — under 
which  heads  are  aranged  all  the  plays  (ex- 
cept one,  seemingly  by  chance  omitted).     More- 


PBELIMINAEY   SURVEY.  131 

over  Shakespeare  himself  in  his  Hamlet  makes  al- 
lusion to  the  same  division,  which  he  has  received 
from  the  aforetime — the  dramatized  History  being 
peculiarly,  though  not  exclusively,  English,  for  it 
was  already  known  to  old  Aeschylus.  But  such  a 
classification  pertains  to  the  art-form  and  hence  is 
essentially  formal,  giving  no  deeper  clew  to  the 
relation  of  the  separate  plays  to  the  poet's  own 
evolution.  In  fact  we  shall  find  that  the  young 
Shakespeare  in  his  early  period  wrote  all  three 
kinds  of  drama,  comic,  historic,  tragic,  and  likewise 
made  exploring  incursions  into  several  other  poetic 
territories  besides  the  dramatic. 

Hence  we  shall  have  to  employ  a  different  method 
and  a  different  nomenclature  for  our  biographic 
purpose.  We  shall  seek,  first  of  all,  to  periodize 
the  poet's  life-work  in  full  accord  with  its  inner 
process  and  fulfilment.  That  is,  the  present  Shake- 
spearian Pan-drama  falls  into  three  great  Periods 
of  unfolding  itself  along  with  its  poet,  three  inter- 
related phases  of  one  total  round  of  human  achieve- 
ment, which  in  a  general  way  we  may  conceive  as 
rise,  culmination,  and  descent,  or  the  morning, 
noontide  and  afternoon  of  his  one  great  creative 
day  of  life.  But  such  similes  are  only  an  outer 
brief  scaffolding  to  help  us  construct  the  real 
building. 

Now  these  three  Periods  of  Shakespeare's  pro- 
ductivity  are  not  only  very  diverse  in  their  con- 
tents,  but  also  they  differ  much  in  the  clearness  of 
their  scope  and  in  the  definiteness  of  their  limits. 


132  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

As  we  are  now  purposing  to  give  in  advance  a  mere 
forecasting  sketch  of  these  Periods,  which  is  to  be 
filled  out  later,  we  shall  first  take  the  one  of  the 
three  which  can  be  marked  off  most  distinctly  in  its 
boundary  lines.  This  is  his  Second  or  purely 
Tragic  Period  lasting  from  about  1600-1  till  1609, 
that  is  some  eight  or  more,  probably  nine  years. 
Out  of  his  previous  very  diversified  and  much- 
scattered  activity,  not  only  in  the  drama  but  also 
in  other  kinds  of  poetry,  he  passes  to  his  unified, 
homogeneous,  concentrated  Period  (this  Second 
one)  in  which  not  only  his  world- view,  but  his  very 
consciousness  turns  mightily  and  undividedly 
tragic.  It  is  rightly  deemed  the  masterful  cul- 
mination of  his  Genius,  bringing  forth  his  greatest 
writ,  if  not  the  greatest  writ  of  all  time  hitherto; 
for  now  his  previously  discursive  Pan-drama  of 
many  kinds  gathers  itself  up  into  one  all-burning 
focus  and  becomes  his  Titanic  Pan-tragedy,  as  we 
may  word  it  in  its  distinctive  character.  This 
Period  overarches  the  poet's  middle  time  of  life, 
say  from  thirty-six  to  forty-five,  doubtless  the 
mightiest  of  all  his  years.  Nine  single  tragedies  we 
place  here,  first  to  be  separately  taken  up  and  or- 
dered, then  finally  to  be  conceived  and  organized 
as  one  supreme  work,  as  the  poet's  one  colossal 
Pan-tragedy  of  human  existence. 

So  much  for  the  Second  Period.  The  next,  in 
clarity  and  definiteness  of  its  periodic  outline,  is,  to 
our  mind,  the  Third  Period  of  Shakespeare's  dra- 
matic achievement.    It  covers  but  a  few  years,  per- 


PBELIMINABY    SUBVET.  133 

haps  only  three  or  four,  and  may  be  regarded  as 
closing  with  the  poet's  last  dramatic  composition, 
about  1612-13.  But  the  tone,  the  mood,  even  the 
meter  changes;  the  action  ends  not  now  in  death 
but  in  soul-healing  restoration.  Moreover  the  poet 
shows  a  return  to  his  First  Period,  dropping 
Tragedy  and  taking  up  again  Comedy  and  even 
History,  if  we  add  his  Henry  VIII.  And  yet  with 
a  deep  difference  of  the  spirit.  The  pervasive 
thought  is  now  that  of  repentance,  reconciliation, 
redemption.  Out  of  his  tragic  world  the  poet  has 
unfolded  into  a  mediatorial  conception  of  life,  and 
his  Pan-dramatic  evolution  ends  happily  in  a  new 
reconciled  species  of  play  which  may  be  suggest- 
ively named  Tragi-comedy,  hyphenating  its  two 
clashing  elements  as  overcome  and  harmonized  in 
mutual  mediation.  Thus  the  Life-drama  of  Shake* 
speare  as  a  whole  winds  up  peacefully  as  one  vast 
finished  drama  of  reconciliation,  in  which  he  shows 
himself  harmonious  with  the  world 's  regnant  spirit 
and  with  himself. 

Having  thus  indicated  the  drift  of  the  Second 
and  Third  Periods,  we  come  finally  to  the  First, 
altogether  the  most  copious,  heterogeneous,  and 
hence  difficult  to  bring  into  any  kind  of  trans- 
parent order.  Thus  it  stands  in  striking  contrast 
to  the  two  later  Periods  of  the  poet  as  already  out- 
lined. Twenty-two  plays  lie  here,  seemingly  a 
tangled  mass  of  youth's  dramatic  luxuriance,  the 
riotous  outgrowth  of  poetic  young-manhood  revel- 
ing in  its  primal  creative  fertility,  which  ranges 


134  SHAKESPEABE*S    LIFEDEAMA. 

in  freedom  from  its  twenty-fourth  (or  possibly 
earlier)  year  till  its  thirty-sixth.  At  the  first 
glance  it  seems  out  of  place  to  put  so  many  dramas 
into  the  First  Period  and  so  few  into  the  Second, 
against  all  the  commentators  by  the  way.  But  we 
must  recollect  that  Hamlet,  for  instance,  of  the 
Second  Period  equals  about  three  plays  of  the  size 
of  the  Comedy  of  Errors  of  the  First  Period,  and  it 
probably  cost  the  author  thrice  three  times  as  much 
human  experience  as  well  as  intellectual  labor  for 
its  creation.  Hence  the  poet's  tragic  Period  may 
well  exhibit  his  greatest  and  most  intensive  outlay 
both  of  body  and  of  soul,  of  physical  vigor  as  well 
as  a  psychical  energy. 

Thus  we  construe  the  London  Pan-drama  of 
Shakespeare,  primarily  emphasizing  its  three  grand 
divisions,  which  we  call  Periods,  each  of  which,  has 
its  own  distinct  character  and  movement  as  well 
as  organisation,  yet  forms  but  one  part  or  con- 
stituent of  the  total  work.  Here  it  is  in  place  to 
re-state  briefly  for  future  guidance,  and  to  set 
down  the  three  cardinal  Periods  in  their  due  order : 

First  Period — that  of  the  young  man  overflowing 
with  an  exuberant  creativity  in  divers  directions, 
testing  himself  variously,  learning  and  unfolding 
his  art  and  himself,  always  striving  and  advancing 
toward  his  highest  goal,  that  of  complete  self- 
realisation,  but  not  yet  quite  getting  there — so  we 
may  call  the  present  Period  from  this  point  of  view 
his  Apprenticeship,  that  stage  of  the  poet's  evolu- 
tion which  comes  before  and  leads  up  to  Master- 


PBELIMINABY   SUEVEy.  135 

ship.  Moreover  it  is  in  the  main  a  time  of  happy, 
easy,  and  exuberant  productivity;  the  prevailing 
mood  is  that  of  Comedy,  though  with  dark  and 
even  tragic  streaks  darting  through  it  here  and 
there.  Hence  this  is  essentially  the  poet 's  variable, 
miscellaneous  Period,  comic  on  the  whole,  in  spite 
of  manifold  divagations  on  other  lines. 

Second  Period — that  of  his  middle  life,  and  espe- 
cially of  his  central  and  sovereign  activity,  his 
Mastership.  Herein  he  shows  himself  in  conflict 
with  himself  and  with  his  world,  quitting  his  previ- 
ous diversity  and  concentrating  upon  one  dramatic 
form,  the  tragic,  and  thus  confining  himself  to  the 
one  highest  domain  of  his  art,  Tragedy.  Hence 
this  is  singly  and  withoout  exception  his  Tragic 
Period,  and  the  poet  in  spirit  becomes  as  tragic  as 
any  of  his  characters,  or  perchance  as  all  of  them 
together.  But  he  gets  able  to  free  himself  of  their 
fates  by  his  remedial  power  of  self-expression,  and 
therein  of  self-realisation. 

Third  Period — that  of  his  later  years,  in  which 
there  is  a  return  out  of  his  dark  tragic  depths  to  a 
sunnier  view  of  life,  to  his  deeply  serious  yet 
happy-ending  Comedy;  thus  we  may  give  it  the 
compounded  title  of  Tragi-comedy,  with  its  re- 
pentance, reconciliation,  redemption.  Shorter  in 
time  and  far  less  intense  than  the  preceding  Period, 
it  nevertheless  rounds  out  his  life's  cycle  to  its 
final  spiritual  fulfilment,  as  well  as  to  its  formal 
psychological  completeness. 


136  SHAKE8PE ABE'S    LIFEDBAMA. 

Thus  we  seek  to  mark  down  in  advance  the 
grand  turns  or  the  capital  joints  in  the  large  and 
complicated  organism  of  the  London  Pan-drama  of 
Shakespeare.  Only  thus  can  we  catch  and  com- 
mune with  his  vast  and  varying  and  ever  evolving 
personality,  as  we  witness  the  mighty  movement  of 
his  soul  realising  itself  fully  in  its  native  form, 
which  is  the  dramatic.  But  underneath  the  dra- 
matic form  lurks  ever  the  psychical,  which  is  the 
deepest  and  most  universal  element  of  man  and 
the  world,  and  of  which  the  drama  is  simply  one 
mode  of  utterance  through  art.  Moreover  we  may 
well  put  strong  and  rejjeated  emphasis  upon  the 
present  periodizing  of  the  poet's  life  and  work, 
since  this  field  of  Shakespearian  exposition  has  been 
generally  slighted,  or  radically  misunderstood  by 
our  worthy  expositors  of  Shakespeare. 

And  here  we  must  not  fail  of  the  reflection  that 
this  completed  Shakespeare,  this  one  monumental 
Pan-drama  of  the  poet  has  never  been  acted  as  an 
entirety,  and  is  not  likely  to  be  so  acted  very  soon, 
under  present  theatrical  conditions.  It  has  to  be 
served  us  in  little  units  or  atoms,  known  as  single 
plays,  out  of  which  the  whole  organism  is  built. 
Still  the  supreme  object  of  Shakespearian  study  is 
to  get  acquainted  with  the  entire  spiritual  struc- 
ture of  the  man  in  his  total  achievement,  and  to 
contemplate  him  not  alone  in  separate  passages, 
characters  and  dramas,  but  in  his  complete  organic 
realisation,  builded  not  merely  of  parts  inde- 
pendent outwardly,  but  of  members  interdependent 


FKELIMINABY    SURVEY.  137 

and  intergrown  inwardly  to  his  one  finished  Life- 
drama. 

Long  ago  it  was  said  that  a  little  extract  or 
speech  from  Hamlet  was  no  more  able  to  give  the 
idea  of  the  play  as  a  whole  than  a  single  brick 
could  show  the  nature  of  th^  building  of  which  it 
was  a  part.  But  the  comparison  should  be  car- 
ried up  higher :  the  single  play,  even  .great  Hamlet y 
is  but  one  room,  even  if  the  most  spacious  of  all, 
in  the  poet's  world-edifice  here  called  the  London 
Pan-drama;  and  the  best  reader  must  endeavor  as 
his  ultimate  aim  not  only  to  live  in  but  to  live  the 
full  Shakespearian  commonwealth  peopled  with 
its  thousand  eternized  characters. 

Accordingly  we  have  taken  our  first  perch  upon 
the  very  dome  of  this  lofty  dramatic  structure, 
and  thence  have  cast  our  preliminary  outlook, 
where  the  view  is  clearest  and  simplest.  Young 
Shakespeare,  with  head  full  of  unwritten  poetry 
and  pocket  full  of  written  verses  we  have  conceived 
as  he  set  out  from  Stratford,  and  we  have  glimpsed 
him  plucking  the  delicious  fruit  of  his  first  London 
experience.  But  his  true  vocation  now  begins  in 
earnest,  and  we  are  to  thread  his  somewhat  laby- 
rinthine ascent  to  the  summit  of  his  Genius,  where 
a  new  and  different  spectacle  sweeps  into  vision. 


FIRST  PERIOD. 

Apprenticeship. 

During  a  dozen  years  or  more  Shakespeare  was 
in  training  to  reach  his  highest  self-expression  in 
the  drama.  Hence  all  this  time  he  remained  a  kind 
of  apprentice  to  his  art,  though  a  great  one,  per- 
chance the  greatest !  So  it  comes  that  we  now  apply 
to  him  the  term  Apprenticeship y  in  order  to  indi- 
cate the  unfinished  poet  as  compared  with  himself 
at  his  topmost  achievement,  which  he  is  to  attain 
in  the  next  Period.  Not  yet  has  he  quite  fulfilled 
himself,  though  we  may  consider  him  at  times  more 
interesting  and  more  brilliant  as  a  learner  than  as 
a  graduate.  This  primary,  grandly  preparatory 
stage  of  the  total  London  Pan-drama  we  inscribe  as 
his  First  Period,  which  we  date  between  the  years 
1588  and  1600,  without  insisting  too  pedantically 
upon  the  exact  year  fore  or  aft. 

And  since  the  poet  during  this  Apprenticeship 
is  ever  the  searcher  and  self-evolver,  we  shall  en- 
deavor to  designate  him  by  certain  salient  ad- 
(138) 


APPRENTICESHIP  139 

jectives,  as  we  may  catch  a  glimpse  of  him  in  his 
changeful  development.  He  is  now  the  versatile 
Protean  Shakespeare,  capable  of  many  transforma- 
tions; he  shows  himself  the  investigator,  the  tester, 
the  experimentalist  along  various  poetic  lines,  try- 
ing them  all  on  his  Genius,  to  see  which  fits  best. 
Assimilative,  too,  we  must  mark  him,  creatively 
assimilative,  not  merely  swallowing  his  lore  in 
erudite  masses.  Also  we  may  conceive  this  as  his 
pre-tragic  Period,  in  which  the  Tragedy  is  as  yet 
implicit  despite  some  prophetic  upbursts. 

Looking  at  the  poet's  literary  output  of  this 
Period  we  find  it  very  multiform,  consisting  of 
many  species  of  composition.  It  is  for  him  a  time 
of  vast  and  varied  experiences  of  the  world  about 
him,  and  especially  a  time  of  putting  his  diversified 
life  into  art.  His  spirit  delights  in  trying  every 
poetic  form  as  the  vehicle  of  his  deeper  creations, 
particularly  of  his  human  characters,  with  which 
this  Pan-drama  of  his  overflows,  as  if  it  were  a 
well-built  city  containing  a  ghostly  but  ever-living 
population,  a  veritable  Shakespearopolis. 

All  educated  people  are  now  supposed  to  know 
Shakespeare's  characters,  at  least  the  leading  ones 
of  his  dramatic  commonwealth.  They  are  our 
familiar  acquaintances,  with  whom  we  seem  more 
intimately  associated  than  with  the  famous  per- 
sonages of  history.  Already  in  the  Public  School 
our  young  folks  obtain  their  unforgettable  intro- 
duction to  Julius  Caesar  the  greatest  Roman,  to 
Hamlet  the  most  famous  Dane,  to  Portia  who  can 


140  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DRAMA 

talk  Latin,  and  to  other  ladies  and  gentlemen  of 
old  and  new  renown.  These  characters  live  for  us 
more  authoritatively  than  the  Presidents  of  the 
United  States,  with  perhaps  two  or  three  excep- 
tions. The  poet  has  made  them  immortal,  as  if 
he  tapped  the  creative  source  of  individuality  it- 
self, and  turned  it  to  flow  into  his  new  human 
mould.  You  may  know  the  ideal  Hamlet  better 
than  you  know  any  breathing  idealist,  and  there  is 
probably  more  of  him  to  be  known.  But  we  seek 
not  merely  to  get  acquainted  with  Shakespeare's 
created  shapes,  however  masterful  and  multitu- 
dinous, but  we  also  long  to  see  the  creator  himself 
in  his  workshop  creating  or  i)er chance  re-creating 
immortal  souls  for  his  poetic  commonwealth,  and 
thus  immortalizing  himself  in  action  as  world- 
builder. 

Another  suggestion,  though  more  intelligible 
later,  should  not  be  omitted  here  at  the  beginning : 
this  Apprenticeship  is  a  part  of  a  greater  whole, 
of  a  total  life-sweep  whose  threefold  process  should 
be  grasped  if  we  are  fully  to  understand  anj^  one 
of  the  poet's  works.  For  he  wrote  each  of  them 
from  his  entire  Self ;  he  was  at  the  start  i)otentially 
all  that  he  afterwards  became  in  reality.  What  he 
is  to  be  lies  already  fermenting  in  his  early  poems, 
and  the  interpretation  should  give  at  least  a 
glimpse  of  the  total  Shakespeare  in  each  part  or 
drama.  There  lurks  in  every  atom  of  the  man  the 
possibility  of  his  whole  career  and  of  its  process  as 
fulfilled,  which  we  are  now  seeking  to  envisage. 


APPEE  N  TIC  E  SHIP  141 

Accordingly  we  must  next  take  up  and  put  into 
some  kind  of  order  this  long  and  complex  Ap- 
prenticeship with  its  twenty-two  plays  and  with  its 
divers  other  poems.  As  already  set  forth,  it  em- 
braces the  First  Period  of  the  poet's  London  Pan- 
drama,  and  divides  itself  into  three  distinctive 
Epochs,  which  we  shall  name  (1)  Collaboration, 
(2)  Imitation,  (3)  Origination.  We  hope  that  in 
these  titles  the  inquisitive  reader  may  catch  before- 
hand a  little  hint  of  the  poet's  inner  movement 
toward  his  goal.  It  should  be  forewarned  that 
these  divisions  both  interlace  and  overlap,  and 
hence  cannot  be  rigidly  fixed  in  annual  limits. 
Still  they  mark  the  dominant  tendencies  or  per- 
chance the  three  larger  successive  surges  up  to- 
ward the  crest  of  his  Genius.  This  First  Period 
also  represents  the  poet's  wrestle  with  tradition, 
which  at  the  start  he  appropriates  immediately, 
then  imitates  independently,  and  finally  transfig- 
ures to  originality. 


142  SHAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA. 


CHAPTER   FIRST, 

COLLABOBATION. 

The  primal  act  of  Shakespeare's  dramatic  au- 
thorship was  his  partnership  in  play-making, 
whereby  two  or  more  were  co-operant  in  one  piece. 
He  felt  himself  not  yet  ready  to  start  on  his  own 
account  and  to  compose  an  independent  work;  he 
became  the  young  co-worker  with  others,  who  were 
his  early  practical  teachers.  Hence  his  first  Epoch 
was  one  of  Collaboration,  in  which  he  is  learning, 
through  the  help  of  more  experienced  writers  for 
the  theater,  to  get  hold  of  the  transmitted  dramatic 
form,  to  win  stage-craft  and  to  dramatize  a  theme 
for  the  public.  This  earliest  enterprise  of  the  poet 
has  its  one  chief  literary  document  in  the  historic 
trilogy  of  Henry  VI,  out  of  which  Richard  III  un- 
folds imitatively.  Hence  the  present  Epoch  brings 
before  us  the  embryonic  Shakespeare,  the  germinal 
dramatist  in  his  first  shape. 

The  time  was  dramatic;  the  sovereign  Elizabeth 
was  dramatic,  especially  in  her  conflict  with  Mary 
Queen  of  Scotland;  the  nation  became  a  drama  in 
its  struggle  with  Spain,  having  a  tragic  outlook 
for  a  while  yet  with  happy  ending.  This  national 
round  through  tragedy  back  to  peace  we  shall  find 
to  lurk  in  the  poet's  total  Life-drama,  hereafter  to 
be  explicitly  set  forth.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  young  poet,  in  this  choice  of  his  life 's  task,  had 


COLLABORATION  143 

felt  the  deepest  and  mightiest  literary  pulse-beat 
of  the  age.  It  was  just  the  English  consciousness 
which  turned  dramatic  and  found  its  supreme  ex- 
pression in  theatrical  presentation.  Some  fifty 
dramatic  poets  have  been  counted  in  the  fifty  years 
of  what  may  be  called  the  Shakespearian  age,  and 
probably  there  were  many  more,  lesser  and  least. 
The  outburst  was  national,  indeed  it  was  more;  it 
had,  as  we  now  see,  an  universal  import. 

These  dramatists,  wild  and  wayward  on  the 
whole,  lived  not  the  regular  prescribed  life  of  the 
community,  but  were  in  a  state  of  protest,  of  de- 
fiance— a  lawless  lot,  daring  trespassers  of  the  tra- 
ditional order,  spendthrifts,  deep  drinkers  haunting 
the  alehouse  and  the  brothel.  As  the  supreme 
type  of  this  class,  the  young  Titan  Christopher 
Marlowe  may  be  listed.  Shakespeare  was  in  the 
whirl,  and  experienced  it  thoroughly ;  still  we  have 
the  right  to  say  that  it  never  controlled  him,  cer- 
tainly he  never  let  it  submerge  him,  as  it  did  quite 
all  his  malcontent  fellow-poets  headed  by  Marlowe. 
But  he  knew  well  through  the  reality  the  conflict 
between  appetite  and  reason,  between  blood  and 
Judgment,  or  senses  and  spirit.  Indeed  the  first 
clash  of  his  poetical  life-battle  was  the  aspiring 
youth's  ever-recurring  collision  of  originality 
supposed  or  actual,  against  tradition. 

England  in  the  time  of  Shakespeare  was  realiz- 
ing her  supreme  national  endowment,  her  will- 
energy,  and  so  she  loved  especially  to  behold  her- 
self in  the   deed.      The   drama   presents  man   in 


144  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

action.  She  had  defeated  the  Armada  and  had 
asserted  herself  against  the  greatest  power  of  Eu- 
rope. Now  the  budding  receptive  poet,  our  young 
Shakespeare,  has  been  whelmed  into  this  upheaval 
of  the  nation  at  its  very  center,  and  starts  to  mak- 
ing himself  its  enduring  voice  both  in  form  and 
substance. 

At  this  national  center,  which  is  the  city  of  Lon- 
don, there  has  been  gathering  and  evolving  the 
crude  material  for  the  new  English  drama;  we 
may  call  it  the  dramatic  protoplasm,  out  of  which 
is  to  be  shaped  by  the  right  artificer  the  coming 
Pan-drama  of  Anglo-Saxondom.  Such  is  the  pri- 
mordial genetic  point  at  which  we  shall  seek  to 
catch  some  glimpse  of  this  new  creation  in  the 
beginning,  of  which  again  we  are  to  hearken  the 
world-forming  word,  as  here  too  ''in  the  beginning 
was  the  word. ' ' 

Thus  we  summon  before  us  the  incipient  poet, 
the  coming  play-maker  Shakespeare  limned  in  a 
rather  dreamy  dawn-light,  as  collaborator,  working 
in  intimate,  quite  indistinguishable  conjunction 
with  his  fellow-dramatists,  he  being  not  yet  fully 
individualized  in  his  product  or  in  himself.  His 
personality  glints  out  here  and  there  in  fitful 
flashes,  and  then  it  seems  to  drop  back  absorbed 
into  the  time's  primordial  mass  without  distinc- 
tive outline.  So  let  us  watch  during  a  little  mo- 
ment for  the  sake  of  the  future,  the  embryonic 
Shakespeare  swimming  in  his  protoplasmic  sea, 
and  then  sinking  in  it  for  a  spell  till  he  rise  out  of 


EAKLY    FELLOW-DBAMATISTS  145 

it  and  receive  the  seal  of  his  creative  individuality 
stamped  ineffaceably  upon  his  separate  works. 

I. 

Early  Fellow-Dramatists. 

Shakespeare,  when  he  first  dropped  down  upon 
London's  dramatic  territory,  found  it  already  pre- 
empted and  cultivated  by  a  band  of  intrepid 
forward-pushing  pioneers,  who  had  in  their  domain 
all  the  challenging  dare-deviltry  of  the  frontiers- 
man. These  became  his  primal  teachers  and 
exemplars,  whose  lesson  he  had  to  learn,  embody 
in  writ,  and  then  transcend.  It  is  now  in  place 
to  give  a  brief  record  of  this  initial  experience  of 
the  oncoming  dramatist,  for  its  influence  stayed 
with  him  till  his  last  penstroke.  Here  follow  the 
names  and  the  chief  doings  of  these  defiant  world- 
stormers. 

1.  The  first  writer  to  be  called  up  in  this  con- 
nection is  the  author  of  Hieronymo  and  The 
Spanish  Tragedy,  two  sanguinary  and  thunderous 
plays,  or  rather  one  play  in  two  parts  usually 
assigned  to  Thomas  Kyd,  though  with  a  question 
mark.  Of  the  life  of  this  man  nothing  definitely 
is  known;  even  his  date  cannot  be  fixed,  yet  it 
must  have  been  before  Shakespeare's  dramatic  en- 
trance in  1587-8,  for  till  then  Kyd's  dramas  and 
his  spirit  had  dominated  the  London  stage,  when 
their  supremacy  was  challenged  by  Marlowe 's  Tam- 
hurlaine.     And  the  name  of  Kyd  yet  lives  as  the 


146  8SAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

originator,  or  at  least  the  best  exponent  of  that 
dramatic  species  still  to-day  known  and  even 
popular  as  the  blood-and-thunder  Tragedy.  But 
our  interest  now  is  to  note  that  the  young  learner 
Shakespeare  took  up  into  himself  this  sort  of 
Tragedy  with  an  immortal  sympathy,  though  he 
kept  transforming  and  ennobling  it  in  accord  with 
his  own  inner  life-long  evolution.  His  Titus  An- 
dronicus  is  an  early  witness  to  Kyd's  influence, 
though  this  play  has  been  denied  him  against  all 
valid  evidence.  It  has  likewise  been  supposed  that 
Kyd  wrote  in  his  manner  the  first  crude  and 
bloody  Hamlet  Tragedy,  which  our  poet  got  to 
know  at  this  time,  but  after  many  years'  brooding 
he  elevated  and  transfigured  it  into  its  present 
dramatic  sovereignty. 

Also  from  Kyd's  grandiosity  of  expression 
Shakespeare  may  have  first  caught  somewhat  of 
that  Oceanic  roll  of  human  speech  wherein  he  be- 
came the  supreme  master,  even  if  he  too  sometimes 
swells  over  into  turgidity  like  his  prototype.  Still 
such  high-sounding  magniloquence  was  a  general 
urge  of  the  time,  and  fails  not  of  its  appeal  to-day. 

2.  More  nearly  co-temporaneous  with  Shake- 
speare than  with  Kyd  were  several  dramatists  who 
are  usually  grouped  together  —  Greene,  Peele, 
Nash  and  Lodge — to  whom  we  may  add  Euphu- 
istic  Lyly  and  Titanic  Marlowe.  They  were 
all  University  men,  classically  trained,  and  prided 
themselves  upon  their  good  education  as  well  as 
their  good  blood  with  a  kind  of  aristocratic  dis- 


EABLT    FELLOW -DE  AM  AT  1ST  S  147 

dain — in  which  matters  they  showed  quite  a  con- 
trast to  the  more  rural  and  less  learned,  but  far 
more  original  Shakespeare.  On  the  other  hand 
they  were  a  dissipated,  reckless,  usually  moneyless 
set  of  Bohemians,  with  the  exception  of  Lyly ;  they 
butted  their  heads  against  social  tradition,  and 
held  aloof  from  Elizabeth's  court,  leading  the  life 
of  gay  lawless  vagabonds,  a  right  Falstaffian  rab- 
ble of  gifted  literary  bummers  hanging  around 
the  taverns  and  underworldly  purlieus  of  London. 

It  so  happens  that  one  of  these  maddened  fel- 
low-dramatists has  handed  down  to  us  the  first  co- 
temporary  allusion  to  Shakespeare  during  the 
aforesaid  early  London  years.  This  is  Robert 
Greene,  who  has  vented  his  anger  and  envy  upon 
the  newcomer  and  evidently  victorious  rival  in  the 
following  jet  of  venom :  ''There  is  an  upstart  crow 
beautified  with  our  feathers"  (he  has  stolen  our 
trade)  ''that  with  his  Tiger's  heart  wrapt  in  a 
Player's  hide"  (adapted  from  Shakespeare's  First 
Henry  VI)  "supposes  he  is  as  well  able  to  bum- 
bast  out  a  blank  verse"  (Marlowe's  new  dramatic 
meter)  ' '  as  the  best  of  you ;  and  being  an  absolute 
Johannes  Factotum"  (skillful  both  as  writer  and 
player,  and  possibly  as  manager)  "is,  in  his  own 
conceit,  the  only  Shake-scene  in  a  country. ' '  Here 
the  evident  allusion  is  to  Shakespeare's  name, 
noted  source  of  much  punning  fertility.  The  book 
from  which  this  passage  is  taken,  Greene's  Groats- 
worth  of  Wit,  belongs  to  the  year  1592,  and  very 
distinctly  heralds  that  Shakespeare  in  a  few  years 


148  SHAEESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

had  already  won  a  commanding  position  in  the 
theatrical  world,  outstripping  his  older  fellow- 
dramatists.  Especially  his  versatility  (Johannes 
Factotum)  is  sneeringly  emphasized,  as  well  as 
his  poetic  power.  Another  fact  we  may  rightly 
infer  from  his  foe's  bitter  words:  Shakespeare 
was  well  aware  of  his  own  transcendent  ability, 
and  probably  would  not  fail  to  show  his  ''conceit" 
if  prodded  a  little.  Doubtless  the  poet  had  al- 
ready come  to  a  consciousness  of  his  own  Genius, 
as  compared  with  his  co-temporary  craftsmen. 
These  now  unappreciated  talents  Greene  advises 
to  quit  their  old  business  and  to  withhold  ''your 
admired  inventions,  for  it  is  pity  men  of  such  wits 
should  be  subject  to  the  pleasures  of  such  rude 
grooms."  Yet  with  some  of  these  writers  Shakes- 
peare is  supposed  to  have  collaborated  in  his  Henry 
VI.  But  the  foregoing  extract  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  he  had  already  risen  out  of  that 
former  phase   of  his   djamatic  evolution. 

Another  glimpse  of  Shakespeare  at  this  date  is 
furnished  by  the  play  writer  Henry  Chettle  who 
had  published  Greene's  vicious  attack.  Only  a 
few  months  later  (December  1592)  Chettle,  in  his 
Kind  Hartes  Dream,  printed  a  very  obsequious 
apology,  evidently  in  response  to  the  protests  of 
the  poet's  friends:  "I  am  as  sorry  as  if  the  orig- 
inal fault  had  been  mine  because  myself  have  seen 
his  (Shakespeare's)  demeanor",  which  the  apolo- 
gist declares  publicly  to  be  *' civil",  duly  acknowl- 
edging at  the  same  time  his  excellence  "in  the 


EABLT    FELLOW-DRAMATISTS  149 

quality  he  professes",  which  doubtless  alludes  to 
Shakespeare's  profession  of  actor.  Moreover  ''di- 
vers of  worship  have  reported  his  uprightness  of 
dealing"  or  his  business  honesty,  as  well  as  "his 
facetious  grace  in  writing,  which  approves  his  art ' ' 
— a  praise  which  seems  to  mark  the  success  of 
Shakespeare's  comic  Muse  up  to  1592-3.  From 
these  scattered  strokes  we  catch  a  very  favorable 
though  sketchy  picture  of  Shakespeare  as  gentle- 
man, business  man,  player,  and  writer,  prosperous 
and  even  distinguished  at  the  age  of  twenty-eight. 
It  is  the  earliest  of  many  tributes  to  his  winning 
personality,  of  which  we  shall  hereafter  catch  re- 
peated echoes. 

3.  -In  this  group  of  dissolute  defiers  of  law,  hu- 
man and  divine,  the  central  figure  rises  up  in 
the  towering  Titan,  Christopher  Marlowe,  often 
called  the  founder  of  English  Tragedy,  which  he 
not  only  wrote  but  tragically  lived.  Shakespeare 
knew  him,  probably  collaborated  with  him,  but 
certainly  imitated  him,  and  for  years  kept  as- 
similating not  only  his  outward  manner  but  his 
creative  Genius.  As  we  construe  the  relation  be- 
tween these  twin  poetic  grandeurs,  Shakespeare's 
prime  task  in  his  early  Apprenticeship  was  to 
take  up  into  himself  and  make  his  own  the  work 
and  life  of  Marlowe,  and  then  to  transcend  his 
master  in  both.  Really  the  Shakespearian  Pan- 
drama  shows  its  Marlowese  contribution  not  only 
at  the  start  but  at  the  finish.  Already  we  have 
remarked  several  times  this  colossal  figure  sweep- 


150  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DRAMA 

ing  into  young  Shakespeare's  horizon,  and  looming 
up  as  it  were  gigantically  out  of  a  primitive  fog- 
world — and  still  more  of  him  is  to  come. 

4.  We  have  taken  a  short  look  at  the  English 
nation  tossing  in  the  throes  of  a  new  epoch  which 
finds  its  unrestful,  explosive  utterance  in  the 
drama  of  the  time.  Some  parallels  may  be  cited. 
For  in  like  manner  ancient  Greece,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  her  great  dramatic  evolution,  showed  a  vol- 
canic energy  of  conception  and  expression,  as 
we  may  still  see  exemplified  in  her  old  poet  Aeschy- 
lus. His  Prometheus  remains  the  primeval  Titanic 
prototype  of  the  divine  Genius  in  revolt  against 
the  upper  powers  of  Law  and  Institution,  which 
through  their  supreme  representative,  Olympian 
Zeus,  chained  him  in  adamantine  fetters  to  the 
inaccessible  peak  of  Mount  Caucasus.  There  he 
has  to  suiter  for  his  defiance  of  the  existing  order, 
being  branded  as  godless  and  a  rebel,  whose  penalty 
is  to  feel  the  vulture  ever  clawing  and  gnawing  his 
vitals.  In  a  number  of  strokes  Prometheus  fore- 
casts a  picture  of  Marlowe,  who  was  in  his  life's 
outcome  more  tragic  than  any  of  his  tragedies; 
indeed  he  was  just  their  tragically  fated  hero. 
Aeschylus  preludes  his  drama  with  the  pitiless 
work  of  two  elemental  powers,  Strength  (Kratos) 
and  Violence  (Bia),  whose  nature  may  be  heard 
resonant  both  in  his  thought  and  in  his  style,  as 
well  as  in  those  of  Marlowe,  through  whom  Shake- 
speare was  first  made  to  feel  ''the  right  Prome- 
thean fire." 


EABLY    FELLOW-DRAMATISTS  151 

More  than  a  century  ago  arose  a  similar  liter- 
ary epoch  of  Titanic  upheaval  and  protest  against 
the  established  world,  which  broke  loose  in  Ger- 
many whereof  the  central  figure  was  the  young 
Goethe.  It  was  known  as  the  time  of  Storm  and 
Stress  {Sturm  und  Drang),  heralding  the  first 
struggles  and  birth  of  the  new  German  literature. 
Goethe  studied  both  Aeschylus  and  Marlowe,  and 
essayed  to  reproduce  each  of  them  in  their  master- 
pieces of  defiance.  So  we  read  that  he,  during 
his  supremely  creative  period,  planned  and  in 
part,  executed  a  new  Prometheus;  also  he  pored 
over  Marlowe's  Faustus,  which  he  once  thought 
of  translating  into  German,  and  whose  suggestive 
theme  finally  became  his  greatest  work,  his  verit- 
able life-poem.  Goethe  like  Shakespeare  passed 
through  and  then  transcended  this  stage  of  furious 
mental  and  social  revolt,  attaining  to  a  recon- 
ciliation with  the  providential  world-order, 
wherein  he  makes  complete  the  spiritual  cycle  of 
his  career.  German  critics  have  not  failed  to  par- 
allel their  Goethe-Schiller  Storm  and  Stress,  with 
the  corresponding  phenomenon  in  the  Marlowe- 
Shakespeare  evolution,  though  the  two  events  and 
their  poets  show  also  a  very  distinctive  unlike- 
ness,  as  mirroring  two  different  peoples  and  ages. 

And  here  it  would  be  a  serious  lapse  in  us  not 
to  record  that  our  American  Literature  has  shown 
and  still  shows  striking  prognostics  of  a  similar 
stormful  and  stressful  crisis  in  its  development. 
Truly  we  are  now  living  in  a  time  of  general  liter- 


152  SB: ABLE 8PE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

ary  revolt  against  old  traditions.  We  can  to-day 
in  our  land  catch  glimpses  of  those  ancient  Greek, 
Aeschylean  god-hammerers,  Strength  and  Vio- 
lence; again  we  can  hear  many  a  blast  of  the 
Goethean  Storm  and  Stress  roaring  through  the 
printed  page;  we  may  even  see  Elizabethan  Mar- 
lowe once  more  rattling  and  writhing  against  his 
social  and  literary  chains  with  a  Titan's  might 
and  fate.  Is  not  our  Walt  Whitman  the  modern 
twin-brother  of  Kit  Marlowe,  though  so  different  in 
lore,  in  metrical  music  and  in  dramatic  gift? 
Whitman  towers  up  our  foresent  American  Titan 
striving  gigantically  to  get  the  ultimate  poetic 
form  for  himself  and  his  message.  But  for  some 
reason  or  other  our  spiritual  brain-storm  and  its 
cyclonic  discipline  have  not  yet  given  birth  to 
an  Aeschylus,  or  a  Goethe,  or  a  Shakespeare,  or 
perchance  a  Marlowe.  Is  he  yet  to  be  shaped 
and  to  rise  out  of  the  present  literary  chaos  of 
our  well-leveled  democratic  mediocrity? 

Here  we  shall  have  to  allow  the  interrogation 
mark  to  stand  till  all-erasing  Time  perchance 
scratch  it  out  with  his  hour-glass.  Meantime  let 
us  hurry  on  to  the  next  landing-place  for  our 
poet. 

11. 
Henry  VI. 

The  cluster  of  plays,  five  of  them  all  told,  which 
gather  around  the  name  and  the  career  of  Henry 
VI,  constitute  the  heart  and  nearly  the  whole  of 


HENBY    VI.  153 

the  Collaborative  Epoch  of  Shakespeare.  This  we 
are  now  to  regard  not  merely  as  a  single  fact,  or 
an  isolated  work  of  the  poet,  but  as  an  epochal 
stage  of  his  life's  unfolding  toward  its  fulfilment. 
Moreover  it  is  to  be  considered  as  the  first  form 
or  the  early  substructure  of  his  completed  edifice, 
which  we  have  called  his  Pan-drama.  The  lead- 
ing characteristic  of  this  time  is  that  the  poet 
has  hardly  yet  individualized  himself,  being  still 
interfused  with  or  absorbed  in  his  co-laborers, 
even  if  we  may  often  glimpse  his  striving  per- 
sonality trying  to  free  itself  into  its  own  distinc- 
tive utterance. 

Henry  VI,  English  King  of  the  House  of 
Lancaster,  throned  already  during  his  infancy,  is 
dated  1422-1471,  whose  reign  lasted  therefore, 
nearly  half  a  century.  The  ruler  of  a  turbu- 
lent land,  he,  starting  as  a  baby,  never  rightly 
got  over  his  babyhood;  he  never  could  shed  his 
swaddling  clothes  or  escape  from  his  leading 
strings,  which  everybody  about  him,  man  and 
especially  woman,  seemed  trying  to  grasp,  and 
thus  become  the  real  sovereign  of  England.  A 
creative  time  of  king-masters  and  even  king-mak- 
ers it  was,  who  never  forgot  that  if  they  could 
only  make  themselves  king-makers,  they  would  be 
all  the  king — and  more. 

Five  plays,  we  say,  form  the  group  which  the 
Shakespearian  student  has  to  take  into  his  reckon- 
ing under  the  title  of  Henry  YI.  These  five 
fall   into   two   distinct   series,    the   canonical    and 


154  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

the  uncanonical,  each  being  thus  measured  by  the 
authorized  canon  of  the  Folio  of  1623.  For  only- 
three  of  these  plays,  superscribed  as  the  First,  Sec- 
ond, and  Third  Parts  of  Henry  VI,  were  printed 
by  the  first  editors,  Heminge  and  Condell,  not  only 
with  Shakespeare's  consent,  but,  as  we  believe,  in 
obedience  to  his  directions.  The  other  two  plays, 
however,  being  thus  excluded  from  the  Shake- 
spearian canon,  may  be  deemed  apocryphal,  though 
they  are  intimately  related  on  a  number  of  points 
with  the  accepted  text  just  mentioned.  In  fact, 
these  two  apocryphal  dramas  are  seen  to  be,  upon  a 
little  inspection,  the  early  forms  or  the  less  mature 
redactions  of  the  two  canonical  dramas,  the  Second 
and  Third  Parts  of  Henry  VI.  So  the  First  Part 
of  Henry  VI  stands  alone,  without  any  such 
apocryphal  back-ground,  though  it  ought  to  be 
classed  with  the  same  on  account  of  its  unripeness 
and  general  inferiority,  according  to  the  view  of 
some  critics.  Still  this  view  is  not  without  its 
frowning  interrogation  mark. 

These  two  uncanonical  plays  were  first  printed 
as  separate  Quartos  in  1594  and  1595  respectively, 
that  is,  more  than  twenty  years  before  the  death 
of  Shakespeare.  They  give  no  name  of  their  author 
in  the  first  edition,  which  comes  early  in  the  ca- 
reer of  the  poet.  But  a  much  later  edition  (1619), 
hence  after  his  death,  prints  both  plays  together, 
as  ''newly  corrected  and  enlarged",  and  also 
adds  ''written  by  William  Shakespeare,  Gent." 
Here  is  an  indication  at  least  that  the  poet's  name 


EENEY    VI.  155 

on  the  title-page  gave  luck  to  the  saleability  of  a 
printed  book.  Also  the  reading  popularity  of 
these  dramas  is  betokened  by  the  repeated  edi- 
tions. 

The  names  of  these  two  uncanonical  plays  must 
next  be  noted,  for  the  sake  of  our  collaborative 
Shakespeare.  The  title  pages  of  both  are  quite 
long,  being  in  each  case  a  kind  of  descriptive 
preface,  most  of  which  we  shall  have  to  omit.  The 
earlier  runs  thus:  ''The  First  Part  of  the  Con- 
tention betwixt  the  two  famous  Houses  of  York 
and  Lancaster,"  which  is  followed  by  a  kind  of 
Table  of  Contents.  Worthy  of  notice  is  the  fact 
that  this  drama  here  asserts  itself  to  be  ''the 
First  Part,"  which  seems  to  indicate  that  the 
canonical  "First  Part  of  Henry  VI"  already  men- 
tioned, had  not  yet  appeared.  This  title  is  still 
too  cumbrous,  so  we  shall  abbreviate  it,  with 
most  commentators,  simply  calling  it  "The  Con- 
tention." The  title-page  of  the  second  uncanoni- 
cal drama  starts  thus:  "The  True  Tragedy  of 
Richard  Duke  of  York",  to  which  are  appended 
numerous  other  happenings:  all  of  which  may  be 
abridged  simply  into  "The  True  Tragedy".  Let 
so  much  be  said  in  the  way  of  some  tedious  but 
needful  preparation,  here  cut  as  short  as  possible. 
And  let  it  again  be  noted  that  the  above  "Conten- 
tion" corresponds  to  the  "Second  Part' of  Henry 
VI",  and  the  "True  Tragedy"  to  the  "Third  Part 
of  Henry  VL" 

At  this  point  opens  the  long  and  complicated 


156  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

interplay,  or  we  may  call  it  a  battle  waged  by 
critics  and  editors  over  these  two  sets  of  dramas, 
the  canonical  and  the  uncanonical.  The  issue 
turns  chiefly  upon  the  assignment  of  authorship, 
in  regard  to  which  three  attitudes  may  be  taken: 
(1)  both  sets  of  plays  are  by  Shakespeare,  a  view 
specially  championed  by  the  English  editor  Knight 
and  by  many  of  the  German  critics:  thus  the 
uncanonical  set  are  merely  old  and  incomplete 
drafts  which  Shakespeare  completed  in  his  canoni- 
cal set;  (2)  neither  set  is  by  Shakespeare  in  any 
responsible  sense,  even  if  he  may  have  added  here 
and  there  some  touches;  (3)  both  sets  are  partially 
by  Shakespeare  and  partially  by  other  authors 
(Peele,  Greene,  Nash,  Lodge,  Marlowe),  or  prob- 
ably these  may  be  reduced  to  one  (Marlowe). 
Here  then  dawns  the  very  large  though  misty 
realm  of  collaboration  in  Shakespearian  exegesis, 
with  its  thousandfold  conjectures  shooting  out 
every  whitherward.  The  chief  difficulty  of  this 
realm  is  that  it  is  almost  entirely  subjective,  with 
little  or  no  anchorage  on  reality,  being  sprung 
variously  of  the  critic's  own  mood,  taste,  temper, 
talent.  Quite  resultless  the  sport  seems  except  as 
a  curious  literary  amusement;  it  keeps  up  suc- 
cessive shakings  of  the  brain's  kaleidoscope,  and 
thus  makes  new  combinations  of  colors  through 
the  shifting  bits  of  fantasticalities.  Such  is  one 
of  the  modern  Shakespearian  diversions,  doubtless 
never  intended  by  the  poet. 

Still  there  is  in  this  field  one  objective,  well 


HENBY     VI.  157 

documented  fact,  which  must  be  fully  validated: 
each  set  of  plays  can  be  shown  mutually  interre- 
lated by  actual  mathematics.  For  instance,  The 
Second  Part  of  Henry  VI  has  some  520  lines 
which  are  also  found  in  The  Contention;  thus  they 
are  joined  together  into  a  common  organism.  In 
like  manner  The  Third  Part  of  Henry  VI  and 
The  True  Tragedy  are  interlinked  in  about  1010 
lines,  which  are  just  the  same  in  both  plays.  Thus 
each  set  of  the  two  plays,  the  canonical  and  the  un- 
canonical,  intertwine  in  their  dramatic  bodies,  and 
are  found  already  wrought  together,  or  collabo- 
rated. Moreover  each  canonical  play  shows  many 
altered  lines,  that  is,  lines  which  are  made  up  of 
words  belonging  in  part  to  both  the  old  and  the 
new  pieces.  Thus  the  intergrown  twins  seem  to 
be  gradually  growing  apart  in  some  of  their  mem- 
bers. These  altered  or  hybrid  lines  run  to  more 
than  800  for  each  set.  Finally  each  new  or  canoni- 
cal drama  has  its  own  separate  complement  of 
altogether  new  lines,  of  which  there  is  no  trace 
in  the  corresponding  uncanonic^l  drama.  That  is, 
the  canonical  Second  Part  of  Henry  VI  has  1715 
entirely  new  lines,  and  the  canonical  Third  Part 
of  Henry  VI  has  1021  entirely  new  lines. 

So  this  double  set  of  dramas  may  be  compared 
to  the  Siamese  twins,  whose  organism  shows  three 
stages  moving  from  unity  to  separation :  first,  they 
are  in  one  portion  completely  united;  secondly, 
in  another  portion  they  become  partly  separated 
and  partly  united;  then  in  a  third  portion  they 


158  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

branch  off  completely  separated.  Yet  all  these 
stages  or  portions  form  the  one  totality  called 
Henry  VI. 

Now  in  this  entire  work  of  Henry  VI,  we  find 
two  all-dominating  collaborators,  Shakespeare  and 
Marlowe,  and  the  whole  reveals  a  picture  of  their 
collaboration.  Both  these  poets  are  of  the  same 
age,  having  been  born  the  same  year  (1564)  ;  yet 
Marlowe  has  matured  far  more  rapidly  than 
Shakespeare,  and  thus  becomes  for  a  while  the 
latter 's  guide  and  exemplar  who  determines  him, 
at  first  quite  absorbing  him,  till  he  learns  and  fully 
assimilates  the  lesson  and  indeed  the  genius  of  his 
teacher.  Then  he  sets  up  for  himself  and  composes 
his  own  independent  drama.  For,  as  I  read  Shake- 
speare, he  never  fails  in  self-assertion  at  the  right 
psychical  moment;  so  he  coalesces  and  collaborates 
with  the  greatest  dramatic  genius  of  the  time,  till 
he  quite  appropriates  Marlowe's  distinctive  gift, 
and  indeed  Marlowe  himself. 

Very  researchful  and  erudite  has  been  the  quest 
for  the  authorship  of  these  five  plays,  furnishing 
infinite  occupation  to  the  learned  critic  and  the 
University  Professor,  who  have  remorselessly  dug 
up  for  illustration  not  only  the  bones  but  the 
very  dust  of  the  long-dead  scribbling  nobodies 
of  Elizabethan  Literature  from  their  underground 
mausoleum.  It  is  on  the  whole  the  most  remark- 
able feat  of  its  kind  in  all  Shakespearology,  and, 
if  we  may  judge  by  recent  elaborate  English 
editions  of  the  poet,   this  work  of  excavation  is 


HENBY    VI.  159 

still  going  on  more  intently  than  ever.  But  the 
hard-hunted  foxy  author,  be  he  other  than  Shake- 
peare  himself,  seems  to  turn  misty,  always  es- 
caping overhead  out  of  reach,  and  being  able  to 
elude  the  search  and  the  research  and  re-research 
up  to  date,  as  far  as  the  ordinary  reader  can 
make  out  from  the  enormous  piles  of  erudition, 
which  we  shall  now  simply  take  the  time  to  skip. 
Accordingly  let  us  at  once  pass  to  the  more  open 
and  significant  question :  What  led  the  young  poet 
Shakespeare  to  hit  upon  the  age  and  character 
of  Henry  VI  as  the  preluding  theme  of  his  dra- 
matic career?  England  had  just  done  a  great 
historic  deed  in  the  defeat  of  the  Armada,  and 
knew  it  well;  hence  she  was  eager  to  behold  her 
own  past  history,  which  told  her  how  she  had 
grandly  got  to  be  what  she  then  was.  The  Tudor 
age  and  spirit  were  a  direct  evolution  out  of 
the  Wars  of  the  Roses;  hence  that  Elizabethan 
audience  wished  to  behold  itself  in  the  mirror  of 
its  own  historic  self-realisation.  Then  the  era 
of  Henry  VI  was  probably  England's  most  forma- 
tive, protoplasmic  time;  her  whole  institutional 
world  as  unfolded  by  the  Middle  Ages  was  flung 
into  the  seething  cauldron  of  Civil  War  for  quite 
half  a  century,  in  order  to  be  first  disintegrated 
and  thereafter  to  be  reconstructed  into  the  new 
order  which  was  just  culminating  in  Queen  Eliza- 
beth's epoch.  The  English  drama  had  already 
made  itself  the  vehicle  of  showing  this  grand 
national   transformation.       The  so-called   History 


160  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Chronicle,  antecedent  to  Shakespeare,  had  evolved 
into  his  Henry  VI,  which  from  this  viewpoint 
may  be  deemed  a  transitional  drama,  bridging 
the  old  species  over  into  the  new,  the  latter  be- 
ing Shakespeare's  own  later  Histories,  as  they 
are  duly  titled  in  the  First  Folio. 

Thus  the  poet  has  seized  the  national  spirit 
of  his  time  and  represented  it  to  itself  in  its  own 
native  form,  which  is  that  of  his  English  historical 
dramas.  And  here  another  result  of  such  occu- 
pation must  not  be  omitted  from  the  record  of 
his  education.  Through  this  early  discipline  of 
history,  Shakespeare  gets  to  know  and  to  realize 
in  himself  the  basic,  most  original  institution  of 
England,  namely  her  political  system;  such  is 
the  prime  training  which  makes  him  supremely 
the  institutional  poet  of  all  the  centuries.  Henry 
VI  was  his  great  preparatory  school  of  institu- 
tions, which  he  saw  and  portrayed  going  through 
their  most  fiery  trial,  and  finally  coming  out  re- 
generated and  purified,  yet  ready  for  another 
testing  evolution,  or  even  revolution  after  the 
Tudors,  which  of  course  he  did  not  live  to  witness. 
The  English  State,  genetic  source  of  the  American 
Constitution  also,  has  become  the  chief  model  of 
the  new  European  Polities,  and  the  nearest  ap- 
proach as  yet  to  a  World-State.  Of  this  universally 
creative  Institution,  which  is  the  most  original  so- 
cial product  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  folk,  Shakespeare 
is  the  poetic  re-creator  and  earth-circling  propa- 
gator.    Still  we  are  not  to  forget  that  all  those 


REN  BY    VI.  161 

historical  plays  taken  together  constitute  but  one 
portion  of  the  total  Shakespearian  Pan-drama. 

Shakespeare  himself  must  have  felt  a  strong  per- 
sonal attraction  for  the  subject  of  Henry  VI,  since 
he  experienced  at  this  time  the  like  spiritual  con- 
dition, for  he  was  passing  through  the  break  from 
his  simple  Stratford  country-life  into  the  new  com- 
plex London  city-life,  where  he  stood  in  the  pal- 
pitating nerve-center  of  the  time's  great  national 
convulsion  and  transformation.  He  wrote  him- 
self out  into  his  drama,  his  experience  dictated  his 
theme  for  his  own  self-expression.  And  when 
looking  back  upon  his  completed  Pan-dramatic 
achievement,  the  editors  of  the  First  Folio,  doubt- 
less representing  Shakespeare  himself,  must  have 
regarded  Henry  VI  with  its  Three  Parts  as  con- 
stituting an  integral  member  of  the  poet's  total 
poetic  organism,  as  indeed  its  primal  embryonic 
protoplasm,  out  of  which  his  whole  life  and  work 
were  to  be  shaped  and  upbuilt.  For  all  the  ele- 
ments of  it  were  then  cotemporaneously  proto- 
plasmic— England,  the  English  drama,  the  English 
dramatist.  All  three,  we  may  say,  collaborated  in- 
stinctively, and  hence  more  deeply  than  if  by  any 
conscious  purpose,  to  lay  the  foundation  of  that 
poetic  world-structure  here  named  the  Shake- 
spearian Pan-drama. 

There  is  another  suggestion  which  may  be  here 
pointed  out  to  the  student  in  advance:  it  is  the 
strain  of  prophecy  which  so  often  breaks  up  to 
the   surface   in   the   present    Trilogy.     This   pre- 


162  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

saging  vein  may  be  regarded  not  merely  as  a 
play-making  device,  but  as  the  inward  urge  of  the 
poet 's  own  nature,  which  drives  him  to  an  outlook- 
ing  forecast  of  what  is  to  become  hereafter  both  in 
the  time  and  in  himself.  He  feels  his  day  to  be 
at  the  dawn  of  some  great  futurity,  and  his  genius 
is  full  of  prescience  which  utters  itself  in  these 
foretelling  characters.  Thus  he  gives  us  repeated 
glimpses  into  his  own  prophetic  soul,  as  he  glances 
out  upon  his  coming  career. 

Nor  are  we  to  forget  that  there  is  an  under- 
current of  the  age's  deepest  tendency  running 
through  this  whole  Trilogy,  which  often  touches 
the  conflict  of  the  two  worlds,  the  old  Latin  and 
the  rising  Anglo-Saxon,  between  which  the  strife 
is  specially  marked  in  the  representatives  of 
Church  and  State,  whose  two  authorities  here  di- 
rectly clash.  But  in  Elizabeth's  time,  Spain  in- 
stead of  France  had  become  the  far  stronger, 
richer,  and  more  intense  Latin  protagonist  both 
secular  and  religious.  Whereof  in  this  Trilogy 
we  may  catch  some  distant  echoes. 

I.  The  First  Part  of  Henry  VI.  This  play 
has  a  bad  name  among  commentators  who  stress 
its  manifold  shortcomings.  And  it  certainly  pos- 
sesses little  inner  unity,  being  rather  a  succession 
of  separate  dramatic  pictures  strown  along  many 
years  than  one  concentrated  action.  Still  it  has 
a  single  leading  theme:  England's  loss  of  France 
through  English  weakness,  folly,  and  dissension. 
Hence  an  ill-omened   theme  to   Englishmen   still 


FIE8T    PAET     OF    HEN  BY     YI.  163 

in  Elizabeth's  time,  though  more  than  a  century 
after  the  event. 

But  just  on  account  of  this  discursive  treat- 
ment and  its  lack  of  organisation  it  connects  with 
the  antecedent  Chronicle  History,  as  it  was  called, 
and  also  suggests  the  unripe  and  unpractised  be- 
ginner, young  Shakespeare.  So  it  has  its  bio- 
graphic position  and  value.  Still  it  may  have 
been  written  after  the  Second  Part  of  Henry  YI, 
for  the  purpose  of  joining  in  one  loose  stretch  of 
events  the  latter  chronologically  with  Henry  V, 
and  thus  of  overarching  the  whole  reign  of  Henry 
VI  in  one  dramatic  Trilogy.  But  its  scattered  in- 
organic character  remains,  and  leads  us  to  con- 
sider it  on  the  whole  as  the  poet's  most  protoplas- 
mic play. 

Moreover  the  first  six  lines  look  back  to  the 
preceding  Lancastrian  drama  of  Henry  V,  and  in- 
terrelate it  with  the  forthcoming  Trilogy.  They 
are  also  written  in  a  pompous  high-flown  style 
which  recalls  Marlowe: 

Hung  be  the  heavens  with  black,  yield  day 

to  night! 
Comets,  importing  change  of  times  and  states 
Brandish  your  crystal  tresses  in  the  sky, 
And  with  them  scourge  the  bad  revolting  stars 
That  have  consented  unto  Henry's  death — 
King  Henry  the  Fifth,  too  famous  to  live  long! 

Here  we  feel  young  Shakespeare  collaborating  spir- 


164  SHAKESPBABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

itually  with  Marlowe,  if  not  literally,  for  we  can 
hear  in  these  lines  Tamburlaine 's  grandiose  oro- 
tundity  of  expression.  As  they  are  printed  in  the 
First  Folio,  the  poet  must  be  taken  to  acknowledge 
them  as  his  own  writing,  even  if  dictated  by  Mar- 
lowe's  spirit.  To  be  sure,  Coleridge,  with  bad 
judgment  and  worse  temper,  has  denied  and  even 
maligned  any  Shakespearian  participation  in  this 
passage,  chiefly  on  metrical  grounds.  But  Cole- 
ridge hardly  conceived  the  poet's  Life-drama  in  its 
evolution. 

The  present  play  has  also  its  suggestions  in  re- 
gard to  Shakespeare's  most  distinctive  gift,  that  of 
character-drawing.  We  may  watch  him  here  in 
his  early  grapple  with  souls  manifesting  themselves 
in  their  outer  actions.  He  starts  now  to  creat- 
ing, or  rather  re-creating  people  and  making  them 
live  and  move  for  the  theatre's  onlooker.  Herein 
he  is  still  more  or  less  embryonic  and  tenta- 
tive. He  takes  essences  or  ideas,  putting  them 
into  body  and  making  them  act  humanly.  For 
instance,  at  the  start  he  seizes  two  opposite  prin- 
ciples representing  the  deepest  conflict  of  the  time, 
namely  that  of  State  and  Church,  or  of  England 
and  Rome,  and  voices  these  principles  and  their 
strife  in  two  strong  colliding  personalities,  Glos- 
ter  the  State 's  regent  and  Winchester  the  Church 's 
prelate.  Their  outlines  are  large,  irregular,  rough- 
hewn,  but  smiting;  the  later  Shakespearian  subtle- 
ties of  characterisation  have  not  yet  risen  to  the 
surface.     Indeed  the  time  is   coarse-grained,   up- 


F1B8T    PABT    OF    SENBY    VI.  165 

roarious  and  bellicose,  given  to  quick,  hard-fisted 
blows,  and  to  hot  revenges. 

Here  we  are  brought  to  face  the  most  furiously 
unanimous  assault  upon  this  play  because  of 
the  poet's  character  of  the  Pucelle,  or  the  Maid 
of  Orleans.  Shakespeare's  own  character  has 
often  been  included  in  this  chorus  of  damnation, 
and  he  may  not  be  at  every  point  blame-proof. 
But  no  critic  within  our  knowledge  has  fully 
grasped  the  first  matter  here  to  be  emphasized, 
which  is  this :  there  are  two  Joan  Dares  in  the  play 
— two  characters  of  the  one  Maid  not  only  diverse 
but  contradictory.  When  the  French  speak  of 
her,  she  is  treated  with  all  sympathy,  her  divine 
mission  is  recognized ;  she  has  beheld  in  vision  the 
true  need  of  her  country,  which  she  proceeds 
to  liberate  through  her  miraculous  power.  But 
the  Englishmen  scout  her  claims,  defame  her 
honor,  make  her  deny  her  own  father ;  her  cunning 
is  deemed  by  them  of  the  devil,  and  finally  they 
burn  her  for  a  witch.  Such  are  the  two  opposite 
views  of  her,  which  really  spring  from  the  two 
opposing  nations;  one  of  these  her  work  is  to  save 
by  the  defeat  and  expulsion  of  the  other.  Hence 
we  behold  two  antagonistic,  mutually  repellent 
Joan  Dares,  as  if  she  may  have  had  a  double, 
self -combative  personality  (which  by  the  way  is 
one  construction  of  her  character). 

Still  this  contradiction  in  the  portraiture  of  Joan 
Dare  is  the  defect,  the  grand  disharmony  in  the 
drama.     Such  a  result  may  spring  from  the  im- 


166  SHAKE8PE ABE'S    LIFE-DRAMA. 

maturity  of  the  poet,  who,  seeking  to  give  impar- 
tially both  sides,  the  French  and  the  English,  al- 
lows their  shrilling  dissonance  to  remain  in  the 
heroine's  character.  Or  here  we  may  find  the 
cleavage  of  a  double  collaboration,  the  unfavorable 
view  of  the  woman  being  set  forth  by  Marlowe, 
who  has  shown  himself  elsewhere  a  misogynist,  in 
contrast  to  Shakespeare's  pervasive  woman-love. 

Time  has,  however,  more  and  more  vindicated 
the  French  view  of  France's  illustrious  heroine, 
in  spite  of  the  ribaldry  and  obscenity  of  one 
of  her  greatest  writers.  It  is  Voltaire,  who  in 
his  Pucelle,  has  more  than  magnified  the  old-Eng- 
lish foul  conception  of  her  deed  and  character, 
as  represented  in  the  bad  half  of  Shakespeare's 
picture.  But  to-day's  France  has  again  taken  up 
Joan  Dare  in  deepest  affection,  and  idealized 
her  in  art  and  poetry  as  her  country's  heroic 
exemplar  during  the  recent  world-war  with  Ger- 
many. And  we  read  that  the  Church  has  resolved 
to  confer  at  Eome  upon  the  French  Maid  the 
somewhat  belated  rite  of  canonization,  which  is 
indeed  taking  place  while  we  write  this  sentence. 
St.  Denys  seems  thus  to  be  supplanted  by  a  woman- 
saint  in  the  revived  worshipful  soul  of  France, 
hitherto  often  not  so  very  worshipful. 

Another  strong  genetic  scene  in  this  play  is  that 
which  is  enacted  in  the  Temple  Garden  where 
Richard  Plantagenet  plucks  a  white  rose  and 
Somerset  a  red  rose  in  mutual  opposition.  Thus 
the  two  roses  become  the  symbols  of  the  two  col- 


SECOND    PART    OF    HENBY    VI.  167 

liding  Houses  of  York  and  Lancaster,  whose  strife 
carries  us  into  the  next  play  pertaining  to  Henry 
VI.  On  account  of  its  superior  style  and  handling, 
we  may  note  an  advance  of  Marlowe's  pupil,  though 
collaborating  spiritually  and  doubtless  literally 
with  the  master. 

II.  The  Second  Part  of  Henry  F/.  This  is 
in  our  opinion  decidedly  the  best  play  of  the 
Trilogy,  the  largest  in  conception,  though  its  or- 
ganism still  remains  more  or  less  in  the  protoplas- 
mic stage  of  the  poet.  We  can  see  him  chalk- 
ing great  outlines  of  characterisation,  especially  in 
the  case  of  Queen  Margaret  and  of  Henry  the 
King,  both  of  whom  throw  their  morning  gleams 
upon  a  number  of  his  future  dramatic  creations. 
Most  significant,  too,  is  the  upburst  of  the  folk's 
under-world,  which,  in  one  shape  or  other,  streams 
through  the  whole  argument  from  the  first  act 
to  the  last:  greatest  example  of  which  is  the 
outbreak  of  the  proletariat  under  Jack  Cade.  The 
strife  which  England  directed  against  another 
neighboring  and  cognate  people,  is  now  turned 
around  into  herself ;  her  external  assault  on  France 
becomes  internal  with  a  national  Nemesis.  En- 
glish dissension,  which  weakened  the  armies 
abroad,  drives  savagely  at  the  home-land,  and  the 
result  is  Civil  War  famed  as  that  of  the  Roses. 
Kings  and  Nobles,  in  the  furious  struggle  for  the 
supreme  power  of  the  State,  slaughter  one  another 
in  the  very  gluttony  of  mutual  retribution. 

Dominating  and  centering  the  drama  is  a  woman. 


168  8HAK1S8PEABE  'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Queen  Margaret,  the  strong-willed  married  to  the 
weak-willed  King  Henry  VI,  whose  sovereignty  it 
is  her  supreme  ambition  to  seize  and  wield  abso- 
lutely. She  comes  from  France  and  is  thus  the 
second  French  woman  (the  other  being  Joan  Dare) 
who  shows  herself  able  to  rise  up  a  destructive 
fate  suspended  over  England.  The  poet  through 
her  enemy  York  has  not  failed  to  suggest  her  na- 
tional origin  and  character. 

She-wolf  of  France,  but  worse  than  wolves 
of  France, 

Whose  tongue  more  poisons  than  the  ad- 
der's tooth! 

Thus  is  indicated  the  transition  from  the  pre- 
ceding First  Part  to  the  present  Second  Part 
of  Henry  VI:  the  hostility  of  France,  represented 
by  a  woman,  has  crossed  the  channel  and  has 
become  seated  on  the  very  throne  of  England — 
a  French  Fury  now  wearing  the  English  crown. 
The  character  of  this  French-born  English  queen 
is  drawn  in  massive,  strong,  but  somewhat  ex- 
aggerated features,  doubtless  after  the  Marlowese 
model.  She  is  a  man-woman — sexed  as  a  beauti- 
ful, artful,  vain  female,  yet  unsexed  as  a  will-pow- 
erful, ambitious,  blood-thirsty  male.  The  poet 
caught  a  hint  of  her  double  nature  from  the  old 
chronicle  of  Hall,  which  he  read  and  reproduced: 
Queen  Margaret,  it  reports,  **  excelled  all  others 
in  beauty  and  favor,  as  well  as  in  wit  and  policy,*' 
(feminine  excellences),  but  also  **she  was  in  stom- 


SECOND    PABT     OF    BEN  BY     VI.  169 

ach  (daring)  and  courage  more  like  a  man  than 
a  woman."  The  same  dualistic  character  is  given 
her  in  the  play  from  various  mouths,  for  instance 

And  yet  be  seen  to  bear  a  woman's  face! 
Women  are  soft,  mild,  pitiful,  and  flexible, 
Thou  stern,  obdurate,  flinty,  rough,  remorseless! 

And  fitting  into  this  context  may  be  cited  the  best 
known  line  of  the  play,  since  it  was  slightly  altered 
and  hurled  by  the  bitter-souled  Robert  Greene 
against  Shakespeare  himself: 

0  tiger's  heart  wrapp'd  in  a  woman's  hide! 

the  word  woman's  being  changed  to  player's  by 
Greene,  as  is  instanced  on  a  preceding  page. 

Here  we  see  doubtless  the  earliest  example  of  the 
poet  assigning  the  dominant  place  in  his  drama  to 
the  woman.  Soon  hereafter  he  will  repeat  this  fe- 
male enthronement  over  the  male  in  a  number  of 
comedies,  as  we  may  note  in  the  case  of  Portia,  of 
Rosalind,  of  Helena.  Already  we  have  under- 
scored the  fact  that  such  a  supremacy  of  the 
woman  lay  deep  and  long  in  his  own  experience, 
for  he  saw  her  ever  regnant  in  his  own  home  dur- 
ing his  entire  youth.  And  when  he  passed  outside 
the  Family  to  London,  to  the  center  of  the  State, 
what  did  he  witness?  Queen  Elizabeth's  strong, 
self-assertive  masculinity  over  the  greatest  men  of 
her  court.  Indeed  one  often  thinks  in  reading 
this  play,  that  Elizabeth  must  have  more  than 
once  furnished  strokes  for  Margaret's  picture — 


170  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DRAMA 

the  petty  female  vanities  of  her  as  well  as  her 
greatnesses,  with  even  that  vagrant  hint  of  her 
secret  love-life.  And  Margaret's  extreme  jealousy 
and  cruelty  toward  any  queenly  rival  brings  to 
mind  Elizabeth's  dealing  with  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots,  when  we  hear  Margaret  explode: 

Not  all  these  lords  do  vex  me  half  so  much 
As  that  proud  dame,  the  Lord  Protector 's  wife : 

who  also  aspires  to  be  England's  Queen  and  claims 
the  throne,  according  to  the  right  of  inheritance. 
And  she  too  finally  like  Mary  is  entrapped  to  her 
fate.  So  we  may  catch  a  faint  reflection  of  the 
impression  produced  upon  the  sensitive  poet  by 
the  execution  of  the  Scottish  Queen  Mary,  which 
took  place  in  1587,  probably  during  the  composi- 
tion of  this  drama. 

But  Margaret  with  all  her  strength,  as  por- 
trayed by  Shakespeare,  is  a  deeply  destructive, 
vengeful,  diabolic  character,  who  at  last  turns  to 
the  very  picture  and  voice  of  Nemesis  (see  her  and 
hear  her  last  in  Richard  III).  Thus  our  young 
poet  starts  his  career  by  dramatizing  the  infernal 
female — at  this  point  I  would  stress  the  collabo- 
rative influence  of  the  decided  woman-hater  Kit 
Marlowe.  But  Shakespeare's  own  life-experience 
at  Stratford  had  already  furnished  some  fertile 
soil  for  the  growth  of  such  a  poisonous,  even  if 
colossal  upas-tree.  Yet  I  would  hold  that  Mar- 
lowe's Satanic  Titanism  was  now  the  main  power 
at   work   upon   the   still   boyishly   impressionable 


SECOND    PABT    OF    HENBT    VI.  YJ\ 

poet,  who  was  yet  at  school  to  the  mighty  but 
sinister  master.  And  the  gigantic  lesson  of  the 
negative  woman  remained  with  him  to  the  end 
of  his  days,  for  he  repeated  Margaret,  undoubtedly 
with  significant  variations,  in  Lady  Macbeth  many 
years  later  during  his  Middle  Period,  and  we  feel 
him  reproducing  demonic  Margaret  again  in  King 
Cymbeline's  Queen,  whose  royal  female  deviltry  is 
exquisitely  brought  out  in  one  of  his  latest  plays 
(Cymbeline). 

And  now  we  come  to  her  grand  contrast,  her 
own  crowned  husband  with  his  elaborately  limned 
character,  deeply  moralized  yet  unwilled  through 
his  very  morality  and  piety.  More  of  the  woman 
is  his  than  of  the  man,  and  it  is  a  woman,  his  own 
wife  and  queen,  who  flings  at  him  reproachfully 
his  unsexed  nature : 

Fie !  womanish  man !  canst  thou  not  curse 
thine  enemies? 

No  other  line  tells  in  one  mad  splash  of  words 
so  much  about  him  and  about  her,  and  yet 
it  occurs  only  in  **The  Contention'',  having 
been  somehow  dropped  out  of  its  true  place  and 
weakened  in  the  revised  Second  Part  of  Henry 
VI  (see  W.  A.  Wright's  edition  of  ''The  Conten- 
tion", Act  III,  Scene  II,  line  145  for  the  verse 
in  its  most  effective  form  and  thrust,  being  there 
directed  at  the  King  and  not  at  her  lover  Suffolk, 
for  whom  it  has  little  point).  On  the  other  hand, 
Margaret,  obsessed  by  the  love   of    regal     power, 


172  SEAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA. 

might  commune  with  herself  now  in  the  words  of 
her  later  self,  Lady  Macbeth : 

Come  you  spirits 
That  tend  on  mortal  thoughts,  unsex  me  here, 
And  fill  me  from  the  crown  to  the  toe,  top-ful 

Of  direst  cruelty ! 

Come  to  my  woman's  breasts, 
And   take   my   milk   for    gall,    you   murdering 
ministers. 

But  the  physical  and  the  intellectual  antithesis 
between  King  and  Queen  is  not  their  deepest,  but 
the  moral;  their  ultimate  differentiation  lies  in 
their  conscience.  The  supreme  lack  of  it  makes 
the  woman  masculine,  the  supreme  excess  of  it 
makes  the  man  feminine;  and  now  the  woman- 
soul  unconscienced  is  wedded  to  the  man-soul  con- 
scienced.  Later  in  Richard  III  the  poet  will  sum- 
mon before  us  a  King  unconscienced  as  the  male 
facsimile  to  Margaret,  the  Queen,  who  will  tell 
him  back  his  own,  both  being  products  of  this  vam- 
pyre-bearing  age.  Still  later  in  Hamlet  we  shall 
behold  another  conscienced  Henry  VI,  whose  wiU 
is  unmanned  through  conscience,  and  who  knows 
his  own  frailty  well,  confessing  it  with  bitter  self- 
reproach  in  the  calmly  terrible  line  (pivotal  not 
only  for  Hamlet  but  for  Shakespeare  himself) : 

Thus  conscience  does  make  cowards  of  us  all. 

That  is,  it  makes  a  coward  of  me  specially,  jUst 
this  Hamlet.     (I  am  fully  aware  that  in  this  well- 


SECOND    PABT    OF    HENBT    VI,  173 

worn  passage  the  meaning  ol  the  word  conscience 
has  been  utterly  perverted  and  eviscerated  by 
forcing  it  to  signify  thought  or  reflection — a  deed 
of  murder  done  to  Hamlet  himself  worse  than  that 
done  to  his  father.  Some  nemesis  lowers  for  the 
perpetrators  of  this  dark  deed  later  on,  when  we 
come  to  the  Hamlet  play). 

Several  times  in  the  present  drama  the  word 
conscience  is  used  by  King  Henry  VI,  and  no 
other  character  utters  it  except  him.  It  is  indeed 
his  personal  word,  and  moreover  it  is  not  found 
in  the  previous  play  of  The  First  Part  of  Henry 
VI,  whose  action  takes  place  chiefly  during  the 
nurseling  years  of  the  boy-king,  who  nevertheless 
gives  a  few  foretokens  of  his  prevailing  bent.  But 
conscience  with  its  synonyms  becomes  now  his 
soul's  own  breviary,  enthroning  the  moral  judg- 
ment within  the  man,  and  asserting  itself  as  the 
absolute  inner  umpire  of  our  outer  actions,  which 
may  thus  by  it  get  quite  vetoed  and  generally 
lamed.  So  our  poet-psychologist  has  repeatedly 
construed  the  reaction  of  conscience  upon  the  will, 
whereof  Henry  VI  is  only  the  preluding  example. 
Hence  this  King's  speeches  are  replete  with  good 
moral  maxims,  valid  in  their  due  limits,  but  in 
their  excess  hamstringing  all  activity.  This  may  be 
illustrated  by  a  famous  citation  from  Henry's 
moralizing  anthology: 

What  stronger  breastplate  than  a  heart  untainted? 
Thrice  is  he  armed  that  hath  his  quarrel  just; 


174  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFEDBAMA. 

And  he  but  naked,  though  lock'd  up  in  steel, 
Whose  conscience  with  injustice  is  corrupted. 

Who  does  not  feel  uplifted  by  these  pithy  moral 
apothegms?  And  yet  the  good  king  will  find 
out,  and  the  play  will  show  him  finding  out,  that 
his  *' heart  untainted"  needs  a  ''stronger  breast- 
plate" than  merely  itself  in  order  to  exist  in  this 
world,  that  his  own  ''just  quarrel"  even  with  its 
triple  armor,  did  not  preserve  him  from  becoming 
tragic  in  life's  conflict. 

Thus  we  behold  the  young  dramatist  opening 
his  career  in  a  desperate  wrestle  with  conscience 
and  its  moral  challenge.  He  must  already  have 
had  some  personal  knowledge  of  this  inner  regnant 
authority,  the  individual's  own  self-crowned  king- 
ship, for  it  is  Shakespeare's  way,  as  already  indi- 
cated, to  distil  his  most  intimate  experience  into  his 
dramatic  characters.  Morover  the  time  was  get- 
ting to  have  its  own  alert  and  aggressive  con- 
science, being  roused  to  a  fresh  intense  activity 
through  the  Reformation,  and  in  England  es- 
pecially through  the  rising  Puritanism,  that  new 
English  Reformation  of  the  Reformation.  Shake- 
speare, the  supremely  responsive  chronicler  of  his 
age,  could  not  help  feeling  and  sharing  this 
deepest  palpitation  of  the  time's  heart.  Most  com- 
mentators say  he  was  hostile  to  Puritanism,  but  I 
do  not  so  construe  his  word  and  deed ;  on  the  con- 
trary he  partook,  with  sympathy  but  without  ex- 
cess,  of  this  unique  soul-searching  manifestation 


SECOND    PAET    OF    HENBT    VI.  175 

of  the  nation's  inner  evolution.  An  undertow  of 
conscience  we  shall  find  streaming  and  straining 
through  his  entire  Life-drama  from  this  earliest 
work  till  his  last. 

But  the  present  play  is  chiefly  remembered  as  the 
one  in  which  Jack  Cade,  the  reformer  and  the 
revolutionist,  starts  up  as  the  opponent  of  King 
and  Nobles,  and  it  is  his  strong,  craggy-featured 
but  humorous  portrait  here  drawn  by  Shakespeare 
which  is  usually  cited  as  proof  of  the  poet's  aris- 
tocratic or  anti-democratic  bias.  This  year  (1920) 
Cade  rouses  new  interest  as  the  leader  of  the  so- 
called  proletariat,  which  has  risen  in  rebellion 
against  individual  ownership  of  property  as  well 
as  against  the  titled  classes,  and  also  shows  it- 
self hostile  to  all  education,  for  one  of  Cade's 
condemned  malefactors  has  been  guilty  of  **  erect- 
ing a  grammar-school"  (perchance  at  Stratford) 
and  of  having  caused  ''printing  to  be  used,"  and 
**thou  hast  built  a  paper  mill."  Such  is  the 
new  equality  of  ignorance  proclaimed  by  Cade, 
who  also  decrees:  ''And  henceforward  all  things 
shall  be  in  common. ' '  So  that  old-new  communism 
of  goods  and  wives  is  here  touched  up  by  Shakes- 
peare, undoubtedly  with  a  little  teeheeing  laugh 
all  to  himself. 

Accordingly  it  turns  out  that  this  Second  Part 
of  Henry  Yl  is  Shakespeare's  chief  drama  of 
popular  discontent,  though  he  introduces  the  same 
theme  elsewhere.  Social  unrest,  as  we  call  it  in 
these  days,  underlies  the  whole  drama,  and  often 


176  8HAK:B:SPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

seethes  up  to  the  surface  in  various  uncanny 
outbreaks.  Most  important  of  all,  the  Commons 
rise  in  revolt  against  the  government  on  account 
of  the  murder  of  ''the  good  Duke  Humphrey," 
being  led  by  the  king-maker  Warwick,  whose  am- 
bition has  taken  advantage  of  a  situation  which  he 
thus  describes: 

The  Commons,  like  an  angry  hive  of  bees, 
That  want  their  leader,  scatter  up  and  down, 
And  care  not  who  they  sting  in  his  revenge. 

Such  is  the  folk's  ''spleenful  mutiny",  which 
the  artful  king-maker  puts  to  the  fore  against 
the  unmanned  King  and  the  unwomaned  Queen, 
whose  weak  discordant  rule  he  with  the  Commons 
will  supplant,  usurping  the  regal  power  which  un- 
derlies the  throne. 

But  there  are  other  darker,  more  hidden  opera- 
tions which  spring  from  the  infernal  underworld 
of  the  time.  An  uncanny  thread  of  forbidden 
magic  is  spun  by  "Margery  Jourdan  the  cunning 
witch",  with  the  aid  of  "Roger  Bolingbroke  the 
conjurer,"  who  have  promised  to  call  up  "a  spirit 
raised  from  depth  of  underground".  Caught  in 
their  maleficent  toils  is  sent  to  banishment  the 
Duchess  Eleanor,  wife  of  good  Duke  Humphrey, 
who  also  gets  smirched  in  their  pitch.  Then  we 
see  the  servant  Peter  turning  informer  and  secretly 
betraying  his  master,  who  in  an  unguarded  moment 
had  said,  "that  the  king  was  an  usurper",  the 
rightful  heir  being  the  Duke  of  York.     Also  a  re- 


SECOND    PART    OF    HENBY    VI.  177 

ligious  imposter  Simp  cox  creeps  forth  out  of  his 
dark  lair  to  daylight,  shouting  *'a  miracle!  a 
miracle!"  But  being  detected  and  whipped  he 
takes  to  his  heels  mid  the  scoff's  of  the  ungodly. 
Hired  assassins  waylay  and  murder  ''the  good 
Duke  Humphrey "  f or  a  price.  Then  in  just  retri- 
bution, pirates  at  sea  slay  the  murderer  and 
adulterer  Suffolk.  The  bad  Cardinal  Beaufort 
dies,  beholding  visions  of  retribution  like  those  of 
Macbeth. 

Thus  no  less  than  six  hellish  upbursts  from  the 
infernal  regions  now  aflame  everywhere  under- 
neath England  we  may  count  in  the  course  of  this 
play,  constituting  its  chief  peculiarity  among  the 
works  of  Shakespeare.  Never  again  to  the  same 
excessive  amount  will  he  employ  such  dramatic 
brimstone,  which  smells  here  more  of  master  Mar- 
lowe than  of  pupil  Shakespeare.  Still  this  lower 
world  of  the  folk  finds  its  due  counterpart  in  the 
upper  world  of  royalty  and  nobility,  who  are  mak- 
ing a  Pandemonium  of  mutual  carnage  out  of 
Britain,  and  like  fiends  broken  loose  from  Satan's 
Netherdom  are  hugely  charactered  with  blood- 
guilt  and  blood-revenge. 

But  the  greatest,  the  most  significant,  yea  the 
most  prophetic  of  all  these  upheavals  is  that  of 
*'John  Cade  of  Ashford,  a  headstrong  Kentish- 
man",  the  bricklayer's  son,  whose  words  have  to- 
day a  familiar  note  echoing  around  the  whole 
globe.  We  may  now  hear  shouted  from  all  lands, 
not  merely  from  that  one  little  speck  of  English 


178  S.EAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA. 

soil  named  Blackheath,  a  language  not  unlike  that 
which  Cade  addresses  to  his  class  called  by  him 
the  Commons,  at  present  known  as  the  Proletariat. 
Cade  universalized  we  read  and  think  to-day,  and 
as  such  he  is  more  ominous,  aye  more  prophetic 
than  ever  before.  And  so  we  presentimentally 
hang  over  his  broken  utterances  in  this  play,  one 
of  which,  rather  ragged  in  style  but  plain  enough 
in  its  general  intent,  we  may  here  set  down : 

And  you,  that  love  the  Commons,  follow  me. 
Now  show  yourselves  men;  'tis  for  liberty. 
We  will  not  leave  one  lord,  one  gentleman ; 
Spare  none  but  such  as  go  in  clouted  shoon, 
For  they  are  thrifty  honest  men,  and  such 
As  would,  but  that  they  dare  not,  take  our  parts. 

Such  is  Shakespeare's  Cade  whom  many  would 
now  call  a  Bolshevist.  From  this  earliest  work  of 
the  poet  let  us  for  a  moment  turn  to  his  last  play. 
The  Tempest,  in  which  he  again  gives  us  a  glimpse 
of  an  ideal  idle  community  of  a  workless  folk, 
whose  one  extreme  is  reached  in  the  reveling 
speech  of  liberty-loving  drunken  Caliban:  "Free- 
dom, heyday,  heyday,  freedom,  freedom,  heyday 
freedom!"  Such  may  be  conceived  the  outcome 
of  Jack  Cade's  popular  decree:  "the  three-hooped 
pot  shall  have  ten  hoops,  and  I  will  make  it 
felony  to  drink  small  beer." 

III.     The  Third  Part  of  Henry  the  Sixth.    Here 
is  a  good  deal  of  letting-down  at  a  number  of 


THIBD    PART    OF    EENBY    VI.  I79 

points;  strikingly  the  present  drama  shrivels,  be- 
ing much  inferior  to  the  preceding  one  in  breadth 
and  grandeur  of  conception  as  well  as  in  wealth 
of  characters,  even  if  it  may  claim  a  closer  though 
narrower  unity  of  action.  Chiefly  it  keeps  up  the 
bloody  seesaw  of  Nemesis  between  the  two  Roses, 
white  and  red.  Thus  it  continues  and  repeats 
what  has  been  already  enacted  to  a  sufficiency. 
Battle  succeeds  battle,  murder  requites  murder, 
till  at  last  the  Lancastrians,  represented  by  the 
king  and  his  son,  are  swept  away  in  death,  and 
the  Trilogy  ends  with  the  triumph  of  the  Yorkists, 
who,  however,  cannot  halt  the  rapid  rush  of  their 
own  self-undoing. 

In  this  drama  is  no  upburst  from  the  dark, 
seething,  nether  depths  of  the  folk-soul,  which 
gives  such  a  new  prophetic  interest  to  the  preced- 
ing play.  The  scenic  movement  is  quite  confined 
to  the  upper  classes,  the  noble  and  the  royal  com- 
batants, who  slash  each  other  frantically  out  of 
life.  Even  the  king-maker  Warwick  is  now  un- 
kinged by  death;  he  must  be  eliminated,  if  king- 
ship is  to  survive  in  England.  The  will-paralytic 
Henry  VI  shows  himself  still  unmanned  through 
his  conscience,  to  whose  behest  he  is  ready  to  sur- 
render even  his  crown,  exclaiming:  ''I  know  not 
what  to  say,  my  title's  weak,"  and  he  actually 
gives  up  his  son's  future  right  of  succession  to 
the  throne.  An  echo  of  his  inner  voice  may  be 
heard  in  the  words  of  Exeter:  "My  conscience 
tells  me  he   [York]  is  lawful  king."     Whereupon 


180  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

the  conscienceless  but  motherly  Margaret  breaks 
out  in  will-assertive  energy : 

I  here  divorce  myself 
Both  from  thy  table,  Henry,  and  thy  bed, 

Until  that  act  of  parliament  be  repeaPd, 
Whereby  my  son  is  disinherited. 

But  even  the  slight  compromise  in  favor  of  Henry 
is  torn  to  pieces  by  the  maddened  sons  of  York, 
who  insist  upon  their  father 's  immediate  possession 
of  kingship,  which  is  his  right.  And  so  the  mutual 
blood-letting  again  starts  the  time 's  mortal  surgery. 
But  the  main  interest  of  the  present  drama 
centers  in  the  fierce  germination  and  crimson  flow- 
ering of  the  character  of  Richard,  son  of  York,  who 
is  hereafter  to  be  staged  by  Shakespeare  peren- 
nially as  King  Richard  III.  Already  in  the  pre- 
vious play  we  have  caught  a  forecast  of  his  inborn 
fighting  nature  when  he  savagely  roars :  ' '  And  if 
words  will  not,  then  our  weapons  shall."  Also 
that  peculiar  demoniacal  stress  upon  his  bodily 
mj;  ^formation  as  mirroring  his  inner  crooked  soul 
we  begin  to  hear  in  Clifford's  reproach: 

Hence,  heap  of  wrath,  foul  indigested  lump: 
As  crooked  in  thy  manners  as  thy  shape. 

But  in  the  present  play  we  soon  are  given  an  out- 
look upon  the  future  of  the  man,  his  supreme  goal 
and  his  remorseless  means  for  attaining  it — ^the 
Kingship.  So  we  scan  carefully  this  early  self- 
revelation  of  him  in  which  lurks  not  only  what  he 


TRIED    PART    OF    EENEY    VI.  181 

is  but  what  he  is  to  be  (Henry  VI,  Part  III, 
A.  I.  So.  2) : 

Your  oath,  my  lord,  is  vain  and  frivolous — 
Therefore,  to  arms !  And,  father,  do  but  think 
How  sweet  a  thing  it  is  to  wear  a  crown 
Within  whose  circuit  is  Elysium, 
And  all  that  poets  feign  of  bliss  and  joy. 
Why  do  we  linger  thus?    I  cannot  rest 
Until  the  white  rose  that  I  wear  be  dyed 
Even  in  the  lukewarm    blood     of     Henry's 
heart. 

Perjury,  war,  murder  he  will  use  in  order  'Ho  wear 
a  crown",  and  will  destroy  on  his  way  thereto 
not  only  the  hostile  red  rose  but  also  his  own  white 
rose  to  its  last  surviving  member,  who  is  just 
himself. 

In  unfolding  the  character  of  Richard  we  al- 
ways feel  the  influence,  if  not  the  hand,  of  the 
poet's  master,  Marlowe,  whose  Tamburlane  tells 
on  the  author  himself : 

The  thirst  of  reign  and  sweetness  of  a  crown 
Moved  me  to  manage  arms  against  thy  state — 
That  perfect  bliss  and  sole  felicity, 
The  sweet  fruition  of  an  earthly  crown. 

Thus  Tamburlane  gives  his  supreme  motive:  the 
ambition  for  sovereign  power.  To  the  same  pur- 
port we  may  now  observe  Shakespeare  letting 
Richard  soliloquize  his  deepest  desire: 


182  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Vl\  make  my  heaven  to  dream  upon  the  crown; 
And,  whiles  I  live,  to  account  this  world  but  hell, 
Until  my  mis-shap  'd  trunk,  that  bears  this  head, 
Be  round  impaled  with  a  glorious  crown. 

Evidently  Marlowe's  Tamburlane  and  Shake- 
speare's Richard  III  are  endowed  with  the  same 
ultimate  passion:  the  resolve  to  kingly  rule,  with- 
out regard  to  any  scruple  of  love,  pity,  or  right. 
Yet  Richard  has  a  personal  trait  distinct  from  Tam- 
burlane: his  hideous  physical  deformity  which 
envenoms  his  diabolic  scoffing  at  his  own  body, 
on  whose  shape  corrupt  nature  *'in  my  mother's 
womb ' '  wreaked  her  spite : 

To  shrink  mine  arm  up  like  a  wither  'd  shrub ; 
To  make  an  envious  mountain  on  my  back. 
Where  sits  deformity  to  mock  my  body. 
To  shape  my  legs  of  an  unequal  size. 
To  disproportion  me  in  every  part 
Like  to  a  chaos — 

Thus  he  champions  his  own  monstrosity  with  a 
kind  of  gloating  hyberbole.  But  this  unique  and 
indeed  capital  trait  of  self -cynicism  in  Richard 
is  not  found  in  Tamburlane,  who  rather  glori- 
fies or  even  defies  his  own  heroic  organism: 

Of  stature  tall  and  straightly  fashioned, 
Like  his  desire  lift  upward  and  divine, 
So  large  of  limbs,  his  joints  so  strongly  knit 
Such  breadth  of  shoulders  as  might  mainly  bear 
Old  Atlas'  burden.     (Tamburlane,  Part  First, 
Act  II.  Sc.  1) 


THIRD    PART    OF    HENRY     VI.  183 

Whence  may  the  incipient  and  still  collaborating 
poet  have  caught  his  first  original  glimpse  of  this 
rarest,  most  individual  stroke  of  Richard's  soul- 
picture?  Again  we  shall  find  it  dreamily  sug- 
gested, though  massively  and  rudely,  by  the  ever- 
prolific  Marlowe  in  his  drama  of  Faustus,  of  which 
the  fiend  Mephistopheles,  '* servant  of  Lucifer"  is 
a  leading  character,  endowed  both  vdth  inner  devil- 
try and  corresponding  outer  deformity.  Indeed 
the  demon's  first  appearance  there  was  so  horrible 
that  even  Faustus  could  not  endure  his  hideous 
look,  and  so  commands  him  to  go  back  and  dis- 
guise his  awful  ugliness  (Marlow's  Faustus  Scene 
3.): 

I  charge  thee  to  return  and  change  thy  shape ! 
Thou  art  too  ugly  to  attend  on  me. 
Go  and  return  an  old  Franciscan  friar, 
That  holy  shape  becomes  a  devil  best. 

Of  course,  Shakespeare  eliminates  this  savage  sa- 
tire against  the  Church,  which  may  be  indicative 
of  a  certain  sympathy  with  it,  and  completely  hu- 
manizes Mephistopheles  in  Richard,  who,  however, 
still  keeps  and  amplifies  and  indeed  intensifies  the 
fiend's  caustic,  self -cynical  word- venom. 

Somewhere  about  1589,  it  has  been  reasonably 
conjectured,  the  Faustus  of  Marlowe  was  staged, 
having  been  composed  not  long  before.  Thus  it 
falls  within  the  time  of  the  Shakespeare-Marlowe 
collaborative  partnership.  Moreover  the  Faust 
legend  had  been  brought  to  England  from  Ger- 


184  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

many,  first  possibly  by  strolling  actors  who  then 
often  wandered  overseas.  But  its  chief  traceable 
source  was  the  English  version  of  Johann  Spiess' 
Faust-book  translated  from  the  German  and 
printed  at  London  in  1588,  whence  it  was  popu- 
larized in  tale,  drama,  and  ballad.  Thus  Shake- 
speare must  have  heard  and  read  the  Faust-legend 
in  his  early  formative  time,  and  it  became  a  part  of 
his  protoplasmic  literary  material,  whereof  traces 
may  often  be  spied  by  the  watchful  reader.  Direct 
allusions  to  ''Faustus"  and  to  * '  Mephostophilus ' ' 
bubble  up  twice  in  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  not 
to  speak  of  other  unnamed  hints.  But  in  Henry  IV 
Falstaff  is  reported  to  have  sold  his  soul  to  the 
devil  "for  a  cup  of  Madeira  and  a  cold  capon's 
leg'' — a  humorous  echo  of  the  central  fact  of  the 
Faust  legend. 

But  the  main  point  here  to  be  emphasized  is  that 
the  poet-apprentice  now  in  his  primal  workshop 
smelts  together  two  huge  sons  of  thunder  born  of 
his  master  Marlowe,  Tamburlane  and  Mephosto- 
philus,  both  loftily  reverberant  of  name  like  their 
deed,  into  one  colossal  and  enduring  personality, 
Richard  III.  So  we  construe  our  new  Promethean 
man-former  Shakespeare,  as  we  watch  him  mightily 
laboring  and  wrestling  with  his  refractory  stuff 
and  often  repeating  his  giant  strokes  in  this  Third 
Part  of  Henry  VL  We  may  also  observe  that  the 
poet  is  now  winning  his  supreme  lesson,  having 
compounded  into  one  eternal  character  two  of  his 
master's    grandiose    but    unfulfilled    conceptions. 


thi:rd  pabt  of  henby   vi.  185 

which  he  has  thus  absorbed  and  transcended.  For 
Marlowe's  two  figures,  though  each  be  as  crudely 
colossal  as  an  Egyptian  statue,  are  alive  and  active 
to-day  chiefly  in  and  through  Shakespeare's 
Richard  III. 

Here,  then,  the  hapless  Trilogy  of  Henry  VI 
sinks  to  its  end,  a  scattered,  ferocious,  but  also 
feracious  jungle  of  writ,  germinating  wildly  every- 
where, and  containing  as  it  were,  the  embryology'' 
of  the  entire  coming  Shakespearian  productivity. 
Hence  we  have  spent  so  much  microscopy  upon  it, 
not  for  its  own  poetic  sake  indeed,  but  because  it 
exhibits  our  poet's  dramatic  school,  headed  by  that 
Titanic  but  unrealized  genius,  dominie  Kit  Mar- 
lowe, wonderfully  seedful,  even  if  of  the  seedy. 
Be  it  noted  again  that  we  have  omitted  all  erudite 
pursuit  of  this  Trilogy's  multiple  authorship,  a 
game  which  seems  to  lead  everywhither  into 
nowhere. 

We  have,  accordingly,  reached  commencement- 
day  of  the  foregoing  Marlowese  school,  whose  star 
pupil,  William  Shakespeare,  now  writes  under  his 
own  name  his  graduation  piece,  Richard  III.  This, 
on  the  one  hand,  may  be  pronounced  to  have  the 
most  Mephistophelian  character  in  the  poet 's  entire 
Pan-drama,  shot  through,  as  Richard  is,  with  the 
devil's  unique  self -caricaturing  irony.  But  on  the 
other  hand,  by  way  of  deepest  counter-thrust,  the 
battle  of  conscience  is  taken  up  and  intensified 
from  Henry  VI,  being  more  emphasized  and  elabo- 
rated than  in  any  other  play  of  Shakespeare,  with 


186  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

the  possible  exception  of  Hamlet.  The  furious 
dualism  between  Conscience  and  Devil  lurks  ulti- 
mate in  Richard's  soul,  is  indeed  Richard's  very- 
selfhood,  and  he  knows  it ;  so  he  keeps  fighting  and 
even  describing  his  inner  battle,  which  is  yet  more 
desperate  and  tragic  than  his  outer  bloody  combat. 
Just  here  lies  the  immortality  of  the  present  drama, 
its  deathless  lesson  and  interest  for  us  dual  mortals, 
who  likewise  find  in  ourselves  a  more  or  less  vivid 
copy  of  the  same  sort  of  warfare. 

Another  thought  will  obtrude  itself:  graduate 
Shakespeare  cannot  help  giving  some  pictured  out- 
line of  his  great  teacher,  with  whose  genius  and 
character  he  has  lived  and  labored  in  deepest  com- 
munion, probably  for  a  couple  of  years  or  more. 
In  master  Marlowe  himself,  I  think,  he  could  wit- 
ness the  hardest  battle  between  Conscience  and  the 
Devil  ever  fought  on  the  arena  of  a  human  soul. 
Thus  Shakespeare  pours  into  the  capacious  per- 
sonation of  Richard  III  his  own  immediate  indi- 
vidual experience  with  his  teacher,  who  was  also  at 
the  time  his  exemplar,  his  compelling  model.  For 
he  could  see  the  conjunction  and  fusion  of  Mar- 
lowe's two  supreme  characters,  the  would-be 
world-conqueror  Tamburlane  and  the  would-be 
world-destroyer  Mephistopheles,  in  the  man  before 
him,  who  is  also  known  to  have  had  his  long  and 
tragic  struggle  with  the  time's  conscience.  And  the 
poet  felt  and  ejected  out  of  himself  into  his  work 
his  own  Titanic  mood. 

But  before  we  quit  this  very  embryonic  Trilogy 


BICHABD    III.  187 

of  Henry  VI,  we  may  well  listen  to  the  corrosive 
words  toward  its  close,  in  which  Gloster,  the  right 
child  and  heir  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  gives  vent 
to  the  inmost  thought  of  himself,  affirming  his 
utterly  isolated  and  demonized  character  as  the 
genuine  product  of  the  time's  militarism: 

Then,  since  the  heavens  have  shap  'd  my  body  so. 
Let  hell  make  crook 'd  my  mind  to  answer  it, 
I  have  no  brother,  I  am  like  no  brother; 
And  this  word  love,  which  greybeards  call  divine, 
Be  resident  in  men  like  one  another, 
And  not  in  me:   I  am  myself  alone. — 

Such  a  completely  de-socialized  individual  has 
the  long  national  strife  brought  forth  in  its  final 
evolution.  Richard  declares  that  he  can  no  longer 
associate  with  his  fellow-man,  having  abjured  all 
love :  /  am  myself  alone.  This  colossal  conception 
of  the  destroyer  of  man's  institutional  world  has 
gotten  hold  of  our  young  dramatic  graduate,  who 
proposes  to  realize  it  in  his  new-won  art.  So  let  us 
now  witness  intently  his  preluding  drama,  which, 
with  all  its  independence  and  originality,  still  bears 
the  signal  impress  of  the  previous  collaborative 
influence  of  Master  Marlowe. 

III. 

Richard  III. 

No  little  difference  of  opinion  among  the  most 
expert  date-hunters  concerning  the  right  birth-year 


188  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

of  this  Shakespearian  play:  they  vary  the  time  of 
its  composition  some  six  or  eight  years  among  them- 
selves. But  what  is  for  us  the  most  important 
matter,  its  place  in  the  evolution  of  our  poet 's  Life- 
drama  can  be  fixed  with  reasonable  precision:  it 
fills  its  own  independent  niche  just  after  Henry  VI, 
out  of  whose  somewhat  nebulous  mass  it  seems 
rapidly  to  shoot  forth  a  brilliant  well-defined  star, 
not  of  the  first  but  of  the  second  or  perchance  third 
magnitude,  in  the  constellation  Shakespeare. 

This,  then,  is  the  prime  salient  characteristic 
which  we  have  to  emphasize:  the  drama  of  Rich- 
ard III  is  strikingly  and  rather  suddenly  individu- 
alized out  of  the  poet's  previous  protoplasmic 
material,  and  as  a  work  it  rounds  itself  out  to  a 
distinctive  wholeness.  Still  further,  its  characters 
rise  up  and  begin  to  shape  themselves  in  clearer 
outlines  from  that  as  yet  rather  unformed  but 
form-seeking  mass  of  personages  known  as  the 
Trilogy  of  Henry  VI.  But  especially  one  mighty 
Titanic  individual  greets  us  at  the  very  start  of  the 
action,  and  holds  us  in  his  demonic  fascination  till 
the  close,  with  a  spell  which  has  shown  itself 
deathless.  Richard  Crookback  still  strides  with 
devilish  limp  the  stage,  and  has  become  acquainted 
with  more  people  to-day  than  ever  before.  And 
one  other  grand  personality  rises  clearly  above  the 
horizon,  separate,  independent,  the  new  creator  of 
these  new  personalities:  the  dramatist  Shake- 
speare. He  is  no  longer  here  in  mere  collaboration, 
indistinetively  commingled  with  other  dramatists ; 


BICEABD    III.  189 

he  has  become  himself,  he  can  say  with  his  leading 
character,  though  in  a  different  spirit,  and  he  does 
say  by  his  creative  deed:  ''I  am  myself  alone.'* 
But  he  still  carries,  even  in  his  independence,  the 
fadeless  impress  of  his  teacher  Marlowe. 

Such  is  the  spirit  which  can  be  felt  through  these 
mightily  but  often  roughly  hammered  and  ham- 
mering verses,  as  they  assert  with  a  grand  defiance 
the  fresh-born  individuality  of  the  poet.  That  is 
what  he  has  in  common  with  Richard,  not  being  like 
him  the  murderer,  perjurer,  devil,  except  ideally 
for  the  time  being.  We  may  indeed  take  this  play, 
as  already  said,  to  be  Shakespeare's  declaration  of 
independence;  he  proclaims  the  freedom  of  his 
genius  henceforth  without  being  trammeled  from 
elsewhence,  and  it  may  be  regarded  as  his  first 
completely  self-dependent  production  in  the  total 
sweep  of  his  Life-drama. 

Still  we  can  trace  an  outside  powerful  influence 
interweaving  with  the  very  flow  of  the  poet's  own 
creative  energy.  In  style  the  present  drama  is 
largely  Marlowese,  at  times  Marlowesque.  We  can 
often  feel  in  it  the  ground-swell  of  Oceanic  Tam- 
hurlane,  which  began  a  new  era  in  the  history  of 
the  English  stage  and  also  in  Shakespeare's  evolu- 
tion. The  mighty  line  of  Christopher  Marlowe  (as 
Ben  Johson  has  baptized  it  forever)  is  here  heard 
again  in  all  its  mightiness — and  something  more. 
Yes,  decidedly  something  more — and  what  is  it? 

Various  differences  have  been  pointed  out  be- 
tween Marlowe  and  Shakespeare,  for  there  is  felt 


190  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

to  be  some  all-compelling  antithesis  between  the 
two  grandeurs,  though  both  be  endowed  supremely 
with  the  godlikeness  of  poetic  genius.  We  read 
Marlowe  to-day,  and  certainly  with  uplift  and 
admiration ;  still  we  hunt  after  him  and  study  him 
chiefly  for  the  sake  of  his  pupil  Shakespeare,  whose 
hidden  filaments  of  origin  reaching  far  down  into 
unconscious  deeps  we  have  to  dig  for,  as  being  not 
the  least  of  our  time 's  cultural  tasks.  One  of  these 
differences  has  been  often  set  forth :  Marlowe,  very 
unlike  Shakespeare  herein,  has  little  or  no  humor, 
and  hence  little  or  no  relief  from  the  overwhelming 
grandiosity  of  his  expression,  whose  verbal  cataract 
tosses  you  around  and  wears  you  out  in  trying  to 
swim  with  it,  even  to  listen  to  its  Niagara.  Then 
his  characters  he  sculptured  as  far-off  prodigious 
Titans,  in  a  kind  of  fog-world,  not  as  sunlit 
Olympian  Gods,  nor  as  clear-cut  mortal  heroes, 
with  their  limited  humanity.  Then  again  Marlowe 
did  not  know  the  woman-soul,  though  he  has  his 
female  characters.  He  never  got  hold  of  the  real 
woman — and  his  life,  yea  his  death  shows  it — 
whereas  Shakespeare  loved  and  appreciated  the 
woman  better  than  he  did  the  man,  for  which  bent 
he  had  good  experience  at  home  in  his  boyhood. 
To  these  well-known  and  acknowledged  short-com- 
ings, I  am  going  to  add  another  which  becomes 
of  special  significance  in  this  our  study  of  Richard 
III,  by  way  of  contrast.  Here  it  is :  Marlowe  has 
little  or  no  Conscience ;  while  in  Shakespeare  Con- 
science with  its  ups  and  downs,  with  its  yes  and  its 


BICHABD    III.  191 

no,  with  its  rewards  and  its  punishments,  with  its 
pungent  criticism  of  life,  winds  through  his  whole 
London  Pan-drama  from  start  to  finish.  Some 
strong  thrusts  of  it  we  have  already  found  in 
Henry  VI,  but  in  our  present  drama  it  is  an  inner, 
deep-flowing  ever-lashing  undercurrent,  or  I  might 
dare  personify  it  and  circumscribe  it  as  an  actual 
character,  calling  it  Conscience  herself  in  person, 
who,  getting  voice  in  one  shape  and  another,  glides 
through  the  entire  action,  as  it  were  uttering  her 
doom  inside  and  underneath  the  outer  doings  of 
Richard,  who  drives  on  in  his  destructive  hurricane 
of  vengeance  to  his  final  catastrophe. 

Here,  accordingly,  I  would  align  the  grand 
transition  from  head  master  Marlowe  to  his  gradu- 
ate Shakespeare,  or  from  the  unfledged  novice  and 
learner  to  the  free-winged  poet,  who  now  goes  into 
business  on  his  own  account.  An  epochal  transi- 
tion in  this  Life-drama  of  his  we  think  it,  passing 
as  it  does  from  his  early  embryonic  out  pushes  to 
his  full-born,  even  if  still  callow  productivity 

But  now  our  turn  comes  to  stress  and  to  ex- 
emplify definitely  this  persistent  ever-driving 
undertow  of  Conscience  which  streams  through  the 
whole  drama,  and  especially  through  the  inner 
subjective  nature  of  Richard,  otherwise  the  out- 
wardly deedful  villain,  as  he  calls  himself,  when 
he  says  '*I  am  determined  to  prove  a  villain.*' 
Nevertheless,  we  hear  him  recognize  in  one  of  his 
earliest  soliloquies,  the  existence  of  these  deeper 
internal  forces  even  while  gloating  with  diabolic 


192  8HAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

irony  on  his  swift  triumph  over  dutiful  but  weak 
Princess  Anne: 

Having  God,  her   Conscience,  and  these 

bars  against  me, 
And  I  no  friends  to  back  my  suit  withal. 
But  the  plain  devil  and  dissembling  looks. 
And  yet  to  win  her,  all  the  world  to  nothing! 

Thus  the  old-new  Serpent  has  again  fascinated  this 
right  daughter  of  our  first  mother  Eve,  with  the 
irresistible  charm  of  original  sin,  of  Satan  incar- 
nate. Still  he  soon  hears  from  the  outside  his  own 
inner  counterstroke  voiced  by  Queen  Margaret  in 
her  frantic  curse: 

On  thee,  the  troubler  of  the  world's  peace — 
The  worm  of  Conscience  still  begnaw  thy  soul — 

as  it  has  been  doing  and  wiii  continue  to  do  in  him, 
and  in  her  as  well,  for  she  knows  ali  about  it,  being 
quite  his  female  counterpart. 

Such  are  the  two  voices,  which  the  poet  still 
further  makes  real  and  externalizes  in  the  two  mur- 
derers whom  Richard  has  hired  to  stab  his  brother 
Clarence  in  the  Tower.  They  represent  the  dua- 
lized Crookback  himself  as  the  outer  monster  yet 
with  his  inner  monitor.  For  in  the  Second  Mur- 
derer ''that  word  Judgment  hath  bred  a  kind  of 
Remorse",  and  he  penitently  declares  that  *'some 
certain  dregs  of  Conscience  are  yet  within  me", 
while  the  First  Murderer  exclaims,  quite  like  the 
outer  Richard :    ' '  Remember  our  reward,  when  the 


BICHABD    III.  193 

deed  is  done."  But  the  Second  Murderer  still 
dallies  like  the  inner  Richard  over  his  Conscience : 
'  *  1 11  not  meddle  with  it ;  it  makes  a  man  a  coward ; 
a  man  cannot  steal  but  it  accuseth  him ;  a  man  can- 
not swear  but  it  checks  him;  it  beggars  any  man 
that  keeps  it" — ^whereupon  the  vaeillator  braces 
himself  up  to  doing  the  deed  of  guilt  along  with  his 
conscienceless  companion.  But  at  once  we  hear  the 
counterstroke  of  Conscience  in  his  soul-wrung 
lament : 

A  bloody  deed  and  desperately  dispatched! 
How  fain,  like  Pilate,  would  I  wash  my  hands 
Of  this  most  grievous  guilty  murder  done. 
Take  thou  the  fee — 

First  murderer  in  reply:  '*Go,  coward  as  thou 
art ! ' '  wherein  we  may  foresee  Lady  Macbeth  wash- 
ing her  hands  in  sleep,  and  crying,  "Out,  damned 
spot ! ' '  and  may  also  forebear  melancholy  Hamlet 's 
far-echoing  line  of  will-lessness :  *'Thus  Con- 
science does  make  cowards  of  us  all!"  But  the 
main  point  is,  that  now  we  behold  the  two  Richards 
thrown  out  into  two  contrasted  characters  which 
prefigure  his  double  personality  with  its  inner  con- 
flict and  final  fate. 

Richard,  accordingly,  reaches  his  supreme  goal, 
which  is  the  throne  of  England,  through  a  success- 
ful career  of  treachery  and  murder.  But  his  Con- 
science, especially  as  reflected  in  his  dream-life,  has 
meanwhile  not  kept  idle;  on  the  contrary  it  has' 
been  hounding  him  like  a  Fury  all  through  his 


194  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

underworld  just  during  the  hours  devoted  to  re- 
pose. Whereof  the  wife  at  his  side  gives  her 
startling  testimony : 

For  never  yet  one  hour  in  his  bed 

Did  I  enjoy  the  golden  dew  of  sleep, 

But  with  his  timorous  dreams  was  still  awak'd. 

Thus  Richard  like  Macbeth  through  his  guilt  "hath 
murdered  Sleep",  and  therefore  like  him  Richard 
''shall  sleep  no  more",  for  it  is  Sleep  which  breaks 
his  waking  will  and  unleashes  all  the  dream-fiends 
of  his  nether  life  to  harry  his  rest. 

The  consummation  of  this  dream-world  of  Rich- 
ard is  shudderingly  poetized  in  the  last  Act  when 
the  ghosts  of  all  his  murdered  kindred  and  friends 
are  marshaled  before  his  frenzied  imagination  in 
sleep,  till  he  starts  up  at  first  in  prayer,  from 
which,  however,  he  soon  recovers : 

Have  mercy,  Jesu !    Soft !    I  did  but  dream ! 
0,  coward  Conscience,  how  dost  thou  afflict  me ! 
The  lights  burn  blue — it  is  now  dead  midnight — 
Cold  fearful  drops  stand  on  my  trembling  flesh. 

Thus  he  again  turns  vengefuUy  upon  that  inward 
monitor  of  his,  and  punisher  too,  when  the  soldier 
in  him  exclaims,  ''What  do  I  fear?  myself? 
There's  none  else  by."  Hereupon  Richard  begins 
a  talk  with  Richard;  the  two  Richards  have  to- 
gether a  dialogue  like  the  two  murderers — or  is  it 
a  monologue  representing  a  kind  of  double  per- 
sonality?   At  any  rate  Richard  Crookback  or  rather 


BICHABD    III.  195 

Richard  Crooksoul,  has  finally  been  made  aware  of 
his  two  contradictory  natures,  both  of  which  now 
are  tongued  against  each  other,  and  engage  in  a 
furious  word-duel,  as  desperate  as  any  outer  sword- 
combat. 

I  am  a  villain ;  yet  I  lie,  I  am  not. — 
Fool,  of  thyself  speak  well ;  fool,  do  not  flatter. 
My  Conscience  hath  a  thousand  several  tongues 
And  every  tongue  brings  in  a  several  tale, 
And  every  tale  condemns  me  for  a  villain. 

Thus  the  sworder  Conscience  seems  to  have  gotten 
the  better  in  the  long  battle,  for  hark  to  Richard's 
soul-riven  groans: 

I  shall  despair — there  is  no  creature    loves  me ; 
And  if  I  die,  no  soul  will  pity  me; 
Nay,  wherefore  should  they?  since  that  I  myself 
Find  in  myself  no  pity  to  myself. 

So  completely  has  he  stopped  every  sluice  of  pity 
for  others,  that  he  no  longer  can  shed  even  a  drop 
of  self-pity  in  his  last  need.  Conscience  here  turns 
him  under,  and  the  hitherto  fearless  soldier  now 
confesses  openly  his  new  fear,  not  to  himself  but  to 
his  fellow-soldier  Ratcliff,  who  calls  him  out  of 
himself : 

By  the  Apostle  Paul,  shadows  to-night 
Have  struck  more  terror  to  the  soul  of  Richard, 
Than  can  the  substance  of  ten  thousand  soldiers 
Armed  in  proof  and  led  by  shallow  Richmond ! 


196  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

Still  he  cannot  turn  back,  having  set  his  life  *'upon 
a  cast";  soon  we  catch  that  last  signal  of  the 
Demon's  despairing  energy,  though  still  defiant: 

A  horse !  a  horse !  my  kingdom  for  a  horse ! 

And  so  he  dies  his  deathless  death,  being  vitalized 
anew  into  eternal  life  by  the  art  of  the  poet.  With 
his  last  breath  Richard  unhorsed  stakes  his  throne, 
the  grand  goal  of  his  ambition,  and  the  hard  won 
fruit  of  all  his  crimes,  for  a  charger  with  which 
to  meet  his  competitor.  But  that  is  the  ultimate 
throw  of  the  world- wagering  gambler  against  Con- 
science, who  is  now  voiced  triumphantly  by  the 
triumphing  Richmond. 

Here  we  may  take  a  brief  side-look  at  the  poet 
in  his  factory.  He  had  before  him  an  older  play 
which  still  exists,  entitled  The  true  Tragedy  of 
Richard  the  Third,  and  which  furnished  him  much 
material  in  events,  in  characters,  and  even  in  words 
for  his  work.  So  we  may  watch  him  fishing  out  of 
the  time-stream  an  abandoned  piece  of  floating 
wreckage  which  he  takes  to  his  workshop  and 
transfigures  to  an  eternal  temple  of  the  Muse.  Of 
this  unique  power  of  his  let  us  test  one  little  speci- 
men, only  a  single  line,  which  in  the  old  play  jolts 
prosily  thus: 

A  horse !   a  horse !   a  fresh  horse ! 

Sample  now  Shakespeare's  corresponding  line  cited 
above,  and  feel  to  the  full  the  difference  and  then 
tell  it.  if  you  can.    Mark  well  that  this  most  strik- 


BICHABD    III.  197 

ing  dramatic  incident  is  here  handed  to  him  di- 
rectly, that  even  the  cue  in  the  first  words  **A 
horse!  a  horse !'^  is  shouted  at  him  by  the  old 
unknown  poet;  but  now  behold  the  sudden  meta- 
morphosis of  death-dealing  prose  into  life-giving 
poetry — the  last  and  topmost  utterance  of  Richard. 
Yet  the  old  versifier  cannot  stop  here  at  the  grand 
culmination,  he  lets  his  finished  Richard  babble 
on  in  a  prolonged  dying  self-colloquy.  But  peace 
be  to  his  nameless  ashes,  for  he  gave  his  old  for- 
gotten bones  to  William  Shakespeare  who  built 
them  into  a  new  body  and  breathed  into  it  his 
breath  of  immortal  life. 

Such  is,  in  general,  the  place  which  we  assign 
to  Richard  III  in  the  evolution  of  Shakespeare's 
total  Life-drama.  It  is  the  bridge  from  his  em- 
bryonic dramaturgy  to  his  more  fully  individual- 
ized work,  from  his  Marlowese  to  his  Shakespearese, 
from  his  vanishing  otherness  to  his  dawning  self- 
ness.  And  the  chief  spiritual  trait  which  signalizes 
this  transition  is  his  employment  of  Conscience  for 
his  characterisation.  Therein  he  mirrored  the 
spirit  of  his  age,  which  was  becoming  more  and 
more  inoculated  with  the  authority  of  Conscience, 
especially  through  the  incoming  religious  revival 
sprung  of  the  Puritans.  That  Shakespeare  shared 
in  this  grand  renascence  of  the  time's  spirit  crops 
out  along  the  whole  line  of  his  plays  from  begin- 
ning to  end,  from  this  his  early  Richard  III,  up  to 
his  middle-aged  Hamlet,  and  thence  onward  till  the 
poet*s  finality  in  Tempest.    May  we  not  hear  a  far- 


198  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

off  echo  of  Richard's  and  Clarence's  throes  of 
Conscience  in  the  tortures  of  Alonso  (Tempest 
III.  3),  whose  thunderous  words  still  keep  up  the 
massive  reverberations  first  heard  in  the  present 
drama,  which,  however,  continue  rolling  through 
the  entire  sweep  of  his  active  Life-drama  for  quite 
a  quarter  of  a  century : 

0,  it  is  monstrous,  monstrous! 
Methought,  the  billows  spoke,  and  told  me  of  it; 
The  winds  did  sing  it  to  me;  and  the  thunder, 
That  deep  and  dreadful  organ-pipe,  pronounced 
The  name  of  Prosper :  it  did  bass  my  trespass. 
Therefore  my  son  i'  the  ooze  is  bedded — 

as  the  penalty  of  the  father's  wrongful  act.  An- 
other instance  will  not  let  itself  be  forgotten  here : 
Conscience  functioning  through  the  imagination 
we  have  found  often  at  work  in  Richard  III;  but 
later  in  the  poet's  Macbeth  it  is  augmented  and  in- 
tensified till  it  becomes  quite  the  entire  instru- 
mentality of  bringing  home  to  the  doer  his  deed 
of  guilt. 

Thus  we  find  that  Richard  III  not  only  reaches 
backward,  but  also  strikes  forward,  being  a  sort  of 
prelude  or  exordium  to  the  grand  Shakespearian 
Pan-drama.  It  touches  certain  fundamental  notes 
which  we  shall  often  hear  in  the  future.  This 
leading-motive  (as  we  may  call  it  for  illustration) 
of  Conscience  sounds  one  chief  theme  attuning  the 
poet's  total  achievement  from  overture  to  finale. 
In  this  single  preluding  play  of  Richard  III,  we 


BICHABD    III.  199 

may  hear  the  word  Conscience  voiced  some  fifteen 
times,  according  to  our  count,  not  to  mention  sev- 
eral synonyms  which  would  add  at  least  as  many 
more  passages  of  like  meaning  to  the  tally.  And 
I  hold  it  is  this  special  characteristic  which  gives 
to  the  play  its  enduring  interest  and  popularity. 
It  has  something  eternally  important  to  tell  you 
every  time  you  hear  it  or  read  it,  something  not 
merely  told  for  your  pleasure,  but  for  your  salva- 
tion. And  also  the  fact  should  be  noted  that 
Richard  III  must  have  been  a  public  favorite  from 
its  theatrical  birthday.  The  cunning,  irresistible, 
demonic  Crookback  was  one  of  the  sovereign  roles 
of  Burbage  the  actor,  as  report  has  transmitted. 
But  more  significant  is  the  ocular  proof  that  six 
separate  editions  of  this  play  were  printed  in 
Quarto  before  the  Folio  of  1623,  and  several  after- 
wards. Thus  it  rises  distinctly  out  of  the  theatre 
into  literature,  and  stays  risen,  till  this  moment, 
when  for  a  little  instance  you  and  I  are  studying 
its  text  with  fresh  zest  and  insight — I  at  least  after 
more  than  sixty  years'  acqauintance.  The  bare 
pyramidal  grandeur  of  Marlowe,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  no  such  hold  on  the  popular  heart.  Why?  I 
have  given  my  answer  to  the  problem  already :  the 
absence  of  Lady  Conscience. 

And  here  we  shall  set  down  the  small  but  pur- 
poseful item  that  of  the  mentioned  six  separate 
Quarto  editions  of  the  present  drama,  four  on 
the  title-page  hyphenate  the  spelling  of  the  au- 
thor's name,  thus:    Shake-speare.     A  little  wink. 


200  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

to  be  sure ;  but  it  suggests  again  the  warlike  spear- 
shaker  now  to  the  eye,  which  suggestion  the  poet's 
contemporary  fellow-craftsmen,  Spenser,  Jonson, 
Digges,  repeat  in  laudatory  verse.  But  especially 
for  this  play  such  a  bellicose  hint  becomes  signifi- 
cant, since  Richard  is  through  and  through  the 
fighting  man,  and  exhibits  strikingly  the  purely 
military  spirit  in  its  origin  and  outcome.  For  war 
spells  destruction,  even  when  used  as  a  temporary 
means,  as  at  times  it  has  to  be.  Richard  is  the  war- 
trained  destroyer,  from  youth  up,  and  the  full 
logical  sweep  of  his  career  is  never  to  stop  till  he 
destroys  his  enemies,  his  friends,  his  kin,  and  him- 
self. Such  is  the  complete  cycle  of  his  character  as 
drawn  by  the  poet. 

Had  Shakespeare  seen  anything  of  the  sort  in 
his  own  experience?  Undoubtedly,  for  England's 
chief  business  and  pre-occupation  for  years  had 
been  to  drill  soldiers  and  sailors  to  meet  the  long- 
threatened  Spanish  invasion.  As  before  said, 
Shakespeare  could  not  help  participating  both  in 
the  work  and  in  the  spirit  of  the  time,  which  was 
essentially  militaristic,  had  to  be  so.  He  must  have 
actually  witnessed  and  possibly  have  served  under 
some  captains  like  Richard,  for  they  never  fail  to 
grow  in  such  a  crisis.  During  his  several  years  of 
Drifting  he  certainly  had  the  opportunity.  So 
from  this  point  of  view,  the  present  drama  may  be 
regarded  as  Shakespeare's  study  of  militarism, 
how  it  is  like  to  mould  human  character,  unless 
there  be  found  some  re-agent  or  corrective.    Rich- 


BICHABD    III.  201 

ard  the  soldier  has  come  to  think  that  he  can  run 
Conscience  through  with  his  sword,  and  fling  it 
away  as  the  corpse  of  his  adversary.  He  kills  all 
his  own  except  his  own  Conscience,  which  keeps 
stabbing  him  till  the  last  thrust. 

The  opening  soliloquy  of  the  play  may  be  re- 
garded as  bringing  before  us  Shakespeare  himself 
looking  back  upon  the  warlike  scenes  he  has  just 
passed  through  after  the  defeat  of  the  Spanish 
Armada : 

Now  are  our  brows  bound  with  victorious  wreaths, 
Our  bruised  arms  hung  up  for  monuments, 
Our  stern  alarums  chang'd  to  merry  meetings. 
Our  dreadful  marches  to  delightful  measures: 
Grim-visag  'd  War  has  smooth  'd  his  wrinkled  front. 

All  of  which  young  Shakespeare  had  very  recently 
experienced,  and  probably  every  man  in  his  au- 
dience. Do  we  not  to-day  (1920)  here  in  America 
witness  similar  occurrences  at  the  home-coming  of 
our  troops  from  the  war  abroad?  But  what  is 
Richard,  who  has  been  fed  on  soldiering  from  his 
babyhood,  now  to  do  with  himself  ''in  this  weak, 
piping  time  of  peace?"  His  vocation,  his  world  is 
gone ;  and  as  there  is  no  war  on  hand,  he  will  start 
his  own  personal  war,  for  just  that  is  not  merely 
his  business,  but  his  very  selfhood,  which  has  be- 
come as  crooked  as  his  body,  and  ever  more  blood- 
thirsty. Besides,  as  all  these  wars  of  the  White 
and  Red  Roses  during  a  hundred  years   have  been 


202  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE  DRAMA 

waged  to  seize  a  throne,  he  will  now  begin  his 
own  war  for  that  same  end.    Why  not?    Hence 

Plots  have  I  laid,  inductions  dangerous 
By  drunken  prophecies,  libels,  dreams — 

And  so  his  new  battle  opens.  I  believe  Shakespeare 
saw  Richard,  talked  with  him,  and  caught  his  spirit, 
which  he  then  threw  back  more  than  a  hundred 
years  and  incarnated  in  the  similar  but  doubtless 
more  terrible  Yorkian  time  of  English  history, 
wherein  he  found  his  full  freedom  of  portraiture, 
since  it  had  been  hostile  to  the  present  House  of 
Tudor,  which  could  not  be  so  easily  shown  its  right 
image  to  its  very  face. 

In  this  early  play  we  are  to  note  Shakespeare  ^s 
use  of  dream-life  to  let  the  unconscious  underworld 
of  man  play  into  his  conscious  overworld  for  the 
purpose  of  bringing  him  to  judgment.  Hamlet  also 
has  ''bad  dreams",  and  hesitates  to  kill  himself 
through  fear  of  "what  dreams  may  come"  during 
that  sleep  of  death.  Now  in  this  subliminal  dream- 
life  Shakespeare  makes  Conscience  the  sovereign, 
but  dethrones  her  in  the  supra-liminal  waking-life ; 
at  least  such  is  Richard's  case.  His  double  per- 
sonality shows  itself  unconscienced  in  his  outer 
deed,  but  conscienced  in  his  inner  underself,  where 
is  seated  his  Minos  or  infernal  judge,  meting  to 
him  with  stern  compensation  the  penalty  of  his 
conduct. 

Over  and  over  again  in  various  forms  Richard 
has  reproached  Conscience  with   cowardice,  as  it 


BICHABD     III.  203 

wells  up  spontaneously  from  below  and  halts  his 
action.  Such  is  the  plague  which  pursues  him  into 
his  last  thought,  whose  words  still  reveal  his  deepest 
conflict,  as  with  self-violence  he  chokes  down  his 
retributive  dream-life  bursting  up  inwardly: 

Let  not  our  babbling  dreams  affright  our  souls ; 
Conscience  is  but  a  word  that  cowards  use, 
Devis'd  at  first  to  keep  the  strong  in  awe; 
Our  strong  arms  be  our  Conscience,  swords  our  law. 

Thus  the  ghostly  sworder  Conscience  springs  forth 
again  as  his  internal  challenger,  from  whom  he 
rapidly  rides  away  into  the  thick  of  his  outer  fight, 
which  is  his  last. 

That  Shakespeare  himself  experienced  some  such 
struggle  of  Conscience,  we  firmly  believe,  for  rea- 
sons already  set  forth.  Here,  however,  we  would 
stress  another  point  of  much  significance  in  the 
poet's  career:  without  the  psychical  habit  of  Con- 
science, there  could  have  risen  no  great  modern 
English  drama,  no  complete  characterisation.  That 
inner  turn  upon  the  self  and  the  holding  it  up  to 
its  ideal  standard  give  the  possibility  of  the  new 
and  deeper  character-making  in  the  Shakespearian 
sense.  So  our  greatest  dramatist  opens  his  career 
with  a  dramatisation  of  Conscience,  the  most  dis- 
tinctive act  of  his  age's  soul-life,  whicli  now  looks 
inward  and  develops  the  self  through  scrutinizing 
and  representing  its  weakness  and  its  strength. 
Conscience  is  still  to-day  the  first  and  best  char- 


204  SHAKESPEARE'S    7JFE-DEAMA. 

acter-builder,  the  very  base  of  our  personality's 
edifice. 

So  we  conceive  the  process:  in  Conscience  the 
individual  rounds  himself  out  within  himself;  he 
calls  himself  before  his  own  tribunal,  where  he  is 
judge,  jury,  sentencer,  and  may  be  executioner. 
This  act  the  whole  nation  was  performing  in 
Elizabeth's  time;  every  responsive  man  was  look- 
ing into  his  life  and  making  a  great  fresh  read- 
justment of  himself  to  the  moral  order  of  the 
world.  Thus  the  individual  becomes  a  new  spir- 
itual totality  in  himself,  and  is  set  in  motion  with 
a  new  energy,  creating  for  himself  also  quite  an- 
other social  environment,  but  especially  originating 
the  new  drama  in  which  he  is  to  be  adequately  por- 
trayed. Hence  we  are  to  observe  that  this  series 
of  four  earliest  plays,  called  sometimes  the  Yorkian 
Tetralogy,  is  of  basic  importance  in  the  education 
of  Shakespeare  unto  his  supreme  self-realisation. 
The  new-born  world-man  has  appeared  and  is  to 
have  his  spiritual  picture  taken  in  his  various  rela- 
tions by  the  artist  who  knows  him  best  just  through 
his  own  experience. 

We  should  here  repeat  that  this  rise  of  Con- 
science in  the  English  nation  is  mainly,  though  not 
wholly,  the  work  of  the  Puritans,  who  after  Shake- 
speare's time  will  undergo  a  grand  evolution  out  of 
and  beyond  the  poet.  But  of  that  we  need  not  now 
speak. 

Here  then  closes  what  we  call  the  First  Epoch  of 
Shakespeare's  Apprenticeship,  which  sets  forth  his 


KWUAKU     111,  205 

time  of  Collaboration,  when  he  was  going  through 
the  primary  school  of  his  art.  These  were  full 
years  for  his  England,  bringing  the  tension  of  the 
Armada  crisis  and  its  first  reactions.  The  con- 
vulsive age  of  the  Roses  gave  him  a  congenial 
dramatic  setting,  as  well  as  a  political  discipline 
for  his  coming  work.  Social  revolt  also  he  got  to 
see  and  to  know  in  his  wild  fellow-dramatists ;  still 
with  him  it  was  at  present  hardly  an  inner  living 
experience  but  rather  some  knowledge  won  and 
appropriated  on  the  outside.  Possibly  he  forefelt 
Marlowe 's  personal  tragedy  from  the  start.  At  any 
rate  Shakespeare's  own  tragic  world  is  to  come 
much  later. 


206  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DRAMA. 

CHAPTER  SECOND. 

Imitation — Experiment. 

Out  of  Shakespeare's  time  of  Collaboration  we 
now  pass  to  the  second  stage  of  his  Apprenticeship 
which  is  distinctively  his  imitative  or  acquisitive 
Epoch,  for  he  has  discovered  what  he  lacks  and  at 
once  goes  after  it.  Hence  he  now  seems  reaching 
out  and  approj^riating  whatever  is  needful  for  his 
new  vocation,  which  aspires  even  beyond  the 
drama;  we  shall  behold  him  in  quest  of  an  uni- 
versal poetic  knowledge  and  practice.  Hence  this 
Epoch  has  the  character  of  a  great  spiritual  expan- 
sion, whose  push  is  to  transcend  former  limits. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  his  previous  state  of 
Collaboration  appears  to  him,  looking  backward,  as 
a  time  of  unfreedom,  pupilage,  subservience,  per- 
chance necessary  for  his  first  dramatic  schooling  as 
well  as  for  his  bread  and  butter.  But  now  he  feels 
himself  able  to  begin  on  his  own  account  and  to 
compose  a  separate,  independent  drama  or  poem; 
he  is  to  find  in  himself  and  to  unfold  the  untram- 
meled  bent  of  his  genius,  of  which  he  has  become 
conscious.  Alreadj^  Richard  III  we  conceive  to 
have  been  for  him  a  kind  of  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, since  this  plaj-,  in  spite  of  its  mighty  self- 
assertion,  bears  still  the  traces  of  an  hitherto 
dominant  but  now  over-borne  collaborator.  Thus 
two  authors,  or  their  opposite  tendencies,  fight  in  it 


IMITATION    AND    EXPERIMENT  207 

as  well  as  its  two  historic  protagonists,  Richard  and 
Richmond,  for  sovereignty ;  and  at  the  close  of  the 
combat  not  Richmond  alone  is  triumphant,  but  also 
Shakespeare.  His  Richard  III,  though  hatched  out 
as  his  own  big  chick,  still  shows  pieces  of  Marlowese 
egg-shell  unshed  till  the  last  stroke. 

So  we  may  say  that  the  i)oet  and  his  work  become 
individualized  in  this  present  Epoch,  though  its 
unfolding  by  no  means  reaches  yet  the  highest 
bloom  of  his  individuality.  He  is  simply  passing 
through  another  stage  in  his  rise  toward  complete 
self-realisation.  He  is  seeking  to  master  and  to 
make-over  all  the  transmitted  forms  of  literature, 
especially  the  poetic ;  he  is  testing  himself,  finding 
himself  out,  trying  his  genius  on  the  cultural  tradi- 
tion of  the  past  by  imitative  reproduction,  yet  inde- 
I)endent.  Hence  this  may  also  be  called  his  experi^ 
mental  Epoch,  for  we  shall  find  in  it  a  greater  and 
more  varied  number  of  essays  in  verse  than  at  any 
other  time  of  his  career.  He  is  testing  and  choosing 
his  implements  of  poetry,  but  in  such  a  creative 
way  that  his  test  becomes  itself  an  eternal  poem. 
Daringly  he  is  winning  a  grand  new  experience  of 
his  art,  and  therewith  the  ultimate  experience  of 
experimentation  itself.  Thus  we  may  glimpse  him 
very  busy  in  his  present  workshop,  marking  well 
the  transition  from  his  former  laboratory  in  con- 
junction with  others  to  his  present  laboratory  with 
and  in  himself. 

But  what  is  the  date  of  this  Epoch?  Again  we 
have  to  confess  that  the  time-limits  cannot  be  laid 


208  SHAKESPEARE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

down  to  the  exact  year,  though  its  general  outline 
may  be  duly  calendared.  The  five  or  six  years 
which  lie  between  1589-90  and  1594-5,  embrace  the 
labors  as  well  as  the  unique  discipline  of  the  man 
during  the  present  Epoch.  Its  essential  fact  we 
have  sought  to  designate  by  several  labels — imi- 
tative, appropriative,  expansive,  experimental — 
indicating  the  poet  in  his  resolute  search  for  the 
right  path  of  his  Genius. 

And  now  we  are  brought  to  grapple  with  th^ 
diversified  contents  of  this  Epoch,  and,  if  possible, 
to  arrange  them  into  some  kind  of  transparent 
order.  For  we  find  before  us  on  the  surface  a 
recalcitrant  mass  of  multifarious  versicles  and 
divers  sorts  of  poetry,  which  sorely  need  some 
method  of  classification.  They  all  burst  up  into 
this  Epoch,  and  show  its  creative  variety  as  well  as 
its  unfettered  spontaneity.  We  have  essayed  sev- 
eral methods  of  organizing  the  rebellious  material 
(which  therein  reflects  somewhat  of  the  poet's  own 
spirit  during  this  time),  but  at  last  we  have  fallen 
back  upon  the  old  and  sometimes  decried  division 
of  poetry  into  epic,  lyric,  and  dramatic,  all  which 
forms  we  find  Shakespeare  employing  and  per- 
chance testing  in  the  course  of  this  Epoch.  Accord- 
ingly we  shall  dare  cut  up  Shakespeare's  poetic 
self  into  three  main  strands  for  the  purpose  of 
threading  the  somewhat  criss-cross  labyrinth  of  his 
writings  during  the  present  phasis  of  his  evolution. 
Let,  then,  these  be  our  larger  headings  under  this 
Epoch : 


IMITATION    AND    EXPERIMENT  209 

I.     The  Epical  Shakespeare. 

II.     The  Lyrical  Shakespeare. 

III.     The  Dramatic  Shakespeare. 

We  naturally  wonder  at  and  inquire  about  the 
cause  of  this  sudden  expansion  of  the  poet's  horizon 
after  his  rather  limited  and  concentrated  work  of 
dramatic  Collaboration.  First  of  all,  we  have  to 
say  that  such  was  the  inborn  aspiration  of  the  man ; 
such  too  was  the  bound-bursting  i)usli  of  this  early 
Epoch  of  him,  exemplified  also  in  his  wont-defying 
master  Marlowe.  Shakespeare  at  this  point  prac- 
tically said  to  himself  in  the  words  of  one  of  his 
characters : 

Now  I  am  cabined,  cribbed,  confined,  bound  in — 

whereupon  he  makes  a  break  over  the  prison  walls 
of  his  spirit,  and  gives  a  plunge  toward  his  new 
Epoch. 

Moreover  the  time  had  taught  him  that  he  needed 
to  know  and  to  be  something  beyond  Marlowe,  who 
had  the  old  Latin  training  but  not  much  of  the 
modern  Italian  culture,  which  seemed  not  to  appeal 
to  him  victoriously  as  it  did  to  Shakespeare, 
wherein  the  latter  shows  himself  the  more  uni- 
versal man.  Indeed  Marlowe  was  by  nature  more 
Northern  than  Southern,  more  Gothic  than  Classic, 
in  spite  of  his  choice  of  some  Greco-Roman  themes. 
There  is  little  doubt  that  his  Faustus  was  Marlowe 's 
most  congenial  and  typical  work,  and  the  one  which 
tapped  the  deepest  and  most  lasting  sources  of 
Teutonic  spirit  in  Europe,  as  is  shown  by  the  con- 


210  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LJFE-DBAMA. 

tinuous  stream  of  Faust  art  gushing  from  this 
earliest  fountain  till  now,  of  which  the  culmination 
is  Goethe's  German  masterpiece.  Shakespeare's 
Hamlet  has  been  often  deemed  ultimately  cognate 
with  Goethe's  Faust,  especially  in  that  deepest 
psychological  problem  of  man,  the  relation  of  his 
intellect  to  his  will.  A  modern  German  poet  (Frei- 
ligrath)  has  entitled  his  most  effective  lyric  Ger- 
many is  Hamlet,  and  hence  destined  to  end  in  the 
Hamlet  tragedy.  But  to-day  we  hear  even  more 
poignantly  and  profoundly  Germany  is  Faust, 
exemplified  in  the  deeply  brooded  ever-welling 
Faust  Mythus,  which  realizes  itself  so  persistently 
and  so  variously  in  the  Teutonic  folk-lore.  Strangely 
English  Marlowe  started,  not  the  original  tale  but 
the  poetic  embodiment  of  it  in  the  prolific  time  of 
Queen  Elizabeth,  and  became  one  of  the  influences 
which  impelled  Goethe  to  his  supreme  achievement. 

Accordingly  we  are  to  see  Shakespeare  in  this 
Epoch  deflecting  from  the  more  Northern  Marlowe 
to  the  Mediterranean  world  with  its  melodious  sun- 
beshone  art.  On  the  other  hand,  Shakespeare's 
new  turn  of  career  seems  to  have  made  Marlowe 
bend  a  little  toward  the  same  direction,  in  what  is 
usually  deemed  his  last  poetic  upburst,  his  Hero 
and  Leander,  left  a  fragment  which  seemingly 
breaks  off  with  his  sudden  death. 

So  let  the  salient  fact  of  this  Epoch  be  now  duly 
signaled :  The  poet  Italianizes,  he  starts  to  absorb- 
ing the  culture  of  modern  Italy,  especially  in  its 
poetic  form.     That  is,  he  makes  a  striking  transi- 


IMITATION    AND    EXPERIMENT  211 

tion  from  his  old  classic  training,  chiefly  won  at 
Stratford,  to  that  of  the  Italian  Renascence  (or 
Renaissance),  into  which  he  finds  himself  suddenly- 
plunged  when  he  gets  settled  in  London.  He  ob- 
serves that  his  foremost  literary  associates  are  more 
or  less  imbued  with  Italian  literature,  that  re-born 
Italy  furnishes  largely  the  time's  poetic  and  es- 
pecially dramatic  material,  that  the  age  itself,  along 
with  Elizabeth's  tone-giving  court,  is  Italianizing. 
Now  we  have  already  detected  that  Shakespeare  is 
peculiarly  sensitive  to  the  great  spiritual  currents 
of  his  environment,  and  seeks  not  only  to  assimilate 
but  also  to  reproduce  them  in  his  art.  Hence  we 
have  to  conceive  him  pushing  at  once  to  appropriate 
and  to  imitate  that  fresh  renascent  world  of  Italian 
spirit,  which,  we  may  add,  will  stay  by  him  and 
deeply  influence  the  whole  sweep  of  his  London 
Pan-drama,  of  which  the  supposed  last  specimen, 
The  Tempesty  is  still  Italianized  through  and 
through  in  locality,  in  coloring,  and  in  content.  So 
the  poet,  in  this  his  peculiarly  imitative  and  appro- 
priative  Epoch,  takes  up  and  recreates  in  himself 
that  great  world-movement  which  arose  and  cul- 
minated in  modern  Italy,  as  it  advanced  out  of  the 
Middle  Ages. 

Now  this  is  a  cardinal  and  lasting  turn  in  the 
poet's  life  and  work;  hence  we  feel  the  right  to 
attempt  some  construction  of  it,  though  it  be  quite 
undocumented. 

(1)  All  are  agreed  that  Shakespeare  must  have 
read  old  Chaucer,  who  is  already  full  of  the  first 


212  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

freshest  and  greatest  literary  flowering  of  the 
Italian  Renascence  in  Dante,  Petrarch,  and  Boc- 
caccio. Thus  the  Italian  movement  had  been  work- 
ing its  way  some  two  centuries  in  England  when 
it  burst  up  with  the  grand  Elizabethan  resurgence 
to  renewed  energy,  in  which  Shakespeare  pro- 
foundly i)articipated.  (2)  In  London  there  was 
an  Italian  cultural  circle  at  whose  center  stood  John 
(Giovanni)  Florio,  son  of  an  Italian  refugee  who 
was  a  Waldensian  clergyman.  Florio  wrote  an 
English-Italian  manual  of  instruction  and  a  dic- 
tionary, made  translations  into  English,  and  gave 
lessons  in  his  native  tongue  and  in  French.  He 
enjoyed  the  friendship  of  the  Earl  of  Southampton, 
our  poet's  noble  patron,  to  whom  were  dedicated 
Venus  and  Adonis  and  also  Lucrece.  Among 
Florio 's  pupils  we  are  going  to  place  William 
Shakespeare,  whose  aspiration  soon  bred  the  resolve 
to  learn  Italian  and  then  to  pay  a  visit  to  Italy 
itself,  at  that  time  the  grand  magnet  of  all  edu- 
cated travelers,  especially  the  English.  (3)  The 
poet's  London  environment  overflowed  with  trans- 
lations, adaptations,  imitations  from  the  Italian,  of 
which  he  must  have  caught  and  assimilated  the 
spiritual  quintessence.  The  air  was  full  of  Italy's 
poetic  forms,  especially  sonnets,  novels,  romantic 
narrative  poems,  (epopees).  One  of  these  Eliza- 
bethan translations,  Fairfax's  Tasso  (printed  in 
1600)  has  shown  itself  enduring  till  to-day;  Shake- 
speare may  have  read  some  of  it  in  manuscript. 
But   altogether   the   supreme,   the   immortal    per- 


IMITATION    AND    EXPEBIMENT  213 

formanee  of  this  Italianizing  time  is  Spenser's 
Fairy  Queen  (first  three  books  published  in  1590) 
whose  influence  wrought  very  decisively  upon  the 
outreaching  Shakespeare  at  the  start  of  the  present 
Epoch. 

But  the  happy-making  incident  as  well  as  the 
most  profound  and  lasting  experience  of  this  Epoch 
Is  the  poet's  visit  to  Italy,  which  has  been  placed 
somewhere  about  1592-3  when  the  theatres  were 
closed  on  account  of  the  plague,  and  Shakespeare 
was  free  of  business  to  take  a  trip  abroad  as  well 
to  escape  from  the  death-stricken  London.  His 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  cities  of  Northern  Italy 
(though  he  makes  mistakes,  as  do  well-prepared 
guide-books  and  even  the  Italians  themselves)  indi- 
cates eye-sight 's  own  inspection ;  but  the  main  proof 
for  us  is  the  poetic  atmosphere  which  we  feel  in 
his  Venice  and  in  his  Verona,  and  which  the  poet 
recreates  out  of  what  he  has  immediately  sensed 
and  inwardly  experienced  on  the  spot,  not  out  of 
what  he  m.ay  have  heard  or  read.  Of  course  this 
Shakespearian  visit  to  Italy  has  been  stoutly  con- 
tested, since  there  is  for  it  no  straight-out  docu- 
mentary script.  Naturally  the  rather  thick-skinned 
biographer  Sir  Sidney  Lee  scouts  it,  affirming  that 
the  poet's  Italian  scenes  **lack  the  intimate  detail 
which  would  attest  a  first-hand  experience  of  the 
country.  *  *  But  Shakespeare 's  reproduction  of  Italy 
shows  something  far  deeper  and  subtler  than  the 
''intimate  detail'*  of  particulars,  though  he  knows 
many  of  these  too.    Hence  telling  such  an  opinion, 


214  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Sir  Sidney  Lee  has  told  more  truth  about  himself 
than  about  Shakespeare.  In  his  biographic  books 
he  has  gathered  an  enormous  concourse  of  facts, 
for  which  we  certainly  should  be  grateful;  and  in 
gratitude  his  readers  may  well  crown  him  the 
champion  biographic  rag-picker  of  the  world,  even 
if  he  seems  unable  to  sew  his  tatters  into  a  whole 
garment.  And  such  whole  garment  should  also 
reveal  somewhat  of  the  soul  which  throbs  the  same 
out  of  itself  into  life's  external  habiliments. 

Accordingly  we  shall  not  only  accept  as  a  fact, 
but  also  as  a  significant  turning-point  in  the  de- 
velopment as  well  as  in  the  writ  of  Shakespeare, 
his  visit  to  Italy.  Though  neither  the  poet  nor 
anybody  else  has  left  any  direct  account  of  it,  still 
its  effect  can  be  felt  underlying  a  large  list  of  his 
productions.  We  hold  that  it  meant  as  much,  yea 
more  to  Shakespeare  than  Goethe's  pivotal  Italian 
Journey  nearly  two  hundred  years  later  did  to  the 
great  German  poet,  who,  however,  has  recorded 
fully  the  meaning  of  Italy  in  his  life  and  work, 
whence  may  come  help  to  us  for  understanding  his 
English  poetical  brother. 

Another  event  which  must  have  produced  a 
strong  impression  upon  Shakespeare  was  the  vio- 
lent death  of  his  alter  ego,  unbridled  Kit  Marlowe, 
who  was  slain  in  a  quarrel  over  a  dubious  female 
at  Deptford  near  London,  May  1593.  It  is  likely 
that  Shakespeare  had  returned  from  Italy  at  this 
time.  Still  wherever  he  was,  he  could  not  help 
seeing  Marlowe's  tragic  nemesis   realized    in   the 


IMITATION    AND    EXPERIMENT  215 

outcome  of  the  man  himself.  The  critic  Francis 
Meres  in  1598  states  that  ''Christopher  Marlowe 
was  stabbed  to  death  by  a  bawdy  serving-man,  a 
rival  of  his  in  his  lewd  love."  The  Puritan 
Vaughn  in  1600  pointed  still  more  sharply  the 
poet's  self-returning  nemesis  in  the  barbed  phrase 
that  "Marlowe's  very  dagger  was  thrust  back  into 
his  own  eye"  by  his  assailant  so  that  his  brain 
oozed  out  and  he  died.  Thus  Marlowe's  cotemp- 
oraries  conceived  and  wrote  down  his  tragic  retri- 
bution, probably  with  a  justice  fabulously  poetic. 
Still  the  fact  of  his  violent  death  in  which  the 
catastrophic  woman  was  involved,  is  generally  ac- 
cepted. So  Marlowe  also  (like  Shakespeare)  had 
his  Dark  Lady,  who,  however,  rapidly  haled  him 
to  his  fate. 

Did  Shakespeare  ever  give  due  poetic  recognition 
of  what  Marlowe  had  been  to  him  in  the  develop- 
ment of  his  genius?  I  think  to  find  in  his  Sonnets 
many  traces  of  grateful  though  veiled  homage  to 
his  master.  Thus  I  construe  the  warmly  conceived 
eulogy  in  Sonnet  78 : 

So  oft  I  have  invok'd  thee  for  my  Muse 

And  found  such  fair  assistance  in  my  verse, 

As  every  alien  pen  hath  got  my  use 

And  under  thee  their  poesy  disperse. 

Thine  eyes,  that  taught  the  dumb  on  high  to 

sing 
And  heavy  ignorance  aloft  to  fly , 
Have  added  feathers  to  the  learned 's  wing 


216  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DRAMA. 

And  given  grace  a  double  majesty. 
Yet  he  most  proud  of  that  which  I  compile 
Whose  influence  is  thine  and  horn  of  thee; — 
In  others '  works  thou  dost  but  mend  the  style, 
And  arts  with  thy  sweet  graces  graced  be; 
But  thou  art  all  my  art,  and  dost  advance    ' 
As  high  as  learning  my  rude  ignorance. 

Who  is  this  addressee  ''thou"?  Many  conjectures 
we  read — a  woman,  a  man,  the  poet's  own  genius, 
even  some  abstraction.  But  to  our  mind  this  sonnet 
intimates  in  a  number  of  ways  Shakespeare 's  strong 
regard  for  and  deep  mental  indebtedness  both  to 
the  learning  and  the  poetry  of  Marlowe,  though  the 
latter  be  unnamed.  Indeed  it  suggests  Marlowe's 
high  jflace  in  the  poetic  firmanent  of  the  time,  his 
influence  upon  other  poets  and  specially  upon 
Shakespeare.  If  I  mistake  not,  there  is  a  feeling 
of  personal  gratitude  which  warms  this  little  poem 
in  spite  of  its  puns,  as  if  coming  from  the  heart  of 
the  pupil  to  his  loved  master. 

Recurring  now  to  the  fore-mentioned  divisions  of 
this  widely  expansive  and  experimental  Epoch,  in 
which  we  find  Shakespeare,  still  young,  imitating 
all  the  transmitted  forms  of  poetry  (epical,  lyrical, 
dramatic)  we  shall  make  a  start  with  the  first. 
Taking  the  historic  development  of  Greek  Litera- 
ture as  the  earliest  and  most  natural  growth  of 
poetry  hithereto  known,  we  find  that  the  Homeric 
Epos  is  the  grand  overture  which  is  followed  by 
the  multitudinous  Lyrists  of  Greece,  to  whom  sue- 


THE     EPICAL     SHAKESPEJEE  217 

ceeds  the  Drama,  specially  the  Attic,  headed  by 
superb  old  Aeschylus.  It  is  significant  to  note  that 
from  this  point  of  view  we  witness  the  poet  Shake- 
speare evolving  along  the  lines  of  his  race's  poetic 
evolution,  and  repeating  individually  in  himself 
the  universal  genesis  of  Literature,  according  to  its 
primal  creative  example.  Moreover  Shakespeare 
taps  that  antique  Hellenic  fountain,  inasmuch  as 
he  was  probably  not  very  learned  in  Greek,  through 
Latin,  Italian,  and  English  conduits,  each  of  which 
has  its  own  distinct  coloring  and  elaboration  of  the 
original  material.  Hence  the  chief  interest  now  is 
to  watch  our  poet  going  back  to  and  drinking  of  the 
very  creation  of  poetry,  insofar  as  this  has  been 
put  into  the  form  of  Letters. 

L 

The  Epical  Shakespeare. 

Not  a  great  national  spontaneous  Epos  like 
Homer's  twinned  masterpiece;  not  a  vast  supra- 
mundane  action  like  Milton's;  not  a  somewhat  arti- 
ficial and  imitated  yet  gloriously  poetical  structure 
with  a  profound  world-historical  outlook,  like  Vir- 
gil's and  Tasso's  deathless  poems;— these  epical 
experiments  of  Shakespeare  (for  such  they  must  be 
finally  considered),  are  relatively  small  affairs, 
confining  themselves  mostly  to  one  sexed  human 
couple  with  their  varied  interactions  of  sensuous 
love.  Rather  must  we  go  back  to  Italian  Ariosto 
and  perchance  Boiardo  to  find  their  form-giving 


218  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

first  source,  though  they  shun  the  Carlovingian  and 
the  Arthurian  medieval  Mythus  for  their  story, 
which  they  in  two  cases  take  from  the  Classic 
world.  Here,  then,  we  may  behold  the  poet  Italian- 
izing himself  in  meter,  rhyme,  stanza,  theme  (as 
love),  and  more  subtly  in  poetic  atmosphere.  Still 
he  gives  at  the  same  time  a  strong  interfusion  of 
English  landscape  and  character,  while  sea-souled, 
aggressive  England  cannot  help  showing  herself  in 
the  very  wave-roll  and  sledge-stroke  of  her  lan- 
guage. 

Three  narrative  poems  of  the  earlier  Shakespeare, 
but  finished  after  his  Italian  experience,  we  set 
down  under  the  above  caption,  putting  thus  to- 
gether one  phase  of  his  imitative,  far-extended 
testing  of  himself  for  his  future  poetic  career. 
These  three  poems  are  found  in  his  works  under 
the  names  of  (1)  Venus  and  Adonis,  (2)  Lucrece, 
(3)  A  Lover's  Complaint.  They  are  essentially  of 
one  class,  simple,  idyllic,  amatory,  for  which  our 
name  would  be  the  Idyllic  Epopee. 

To  be  kept  well  in  memory  and  to  be  strongly 
emphasized  is  the  prime  fact,  that  a  woman  stands 
at  the  center  of  all  three  poems,  of  course  differ- 
ently charactered  and  with  her  own  separate  con- 
flict. So  they  conjointly  reveal  the  poet  again 
making  the  woman  the  pivot  of  his  poesy,  as  she  lay 
in  the  heart  of  his  experience  past  and  present,  at 
Stratford  and  at  London. 

All  three  show  the  new  ambition  of  the  young 
poet,  and  reveal  his  limit-transcending  aspiration. 


THE    EPICAL    SHAKESPEABE  219 

He  now  is  seen  branching  off  to  a  fresh  domain  of 
his  poetic  art,  testing  his  rather  callow  wings  in  a 
foreign  far-away  flight.  The  three  poems,  though 
cast  into  one  general  mould,  and  imbreathed  with 
one  basic  spirit,  can  be  seen  to  represent  three  dif- 
ferent stages  of  the  epical  Shakespeare,  till  he 
rounds  out  this  unique  experience  and  rises  above 
it  to  the  next  higher.  So  let  us  scan  the  poet  as  he 
makes  trial  of  that  new  poetic  form  here  called  the 
Idyllic  Epopee. 

1.  Venus  and  Adonis.  Such  was  the  title  of 
Shakespeare's  first  printed  book,  which  was  author- 
ized by  himself  and  published  under  his  name  given 
in  a  dedication  but  not  on  the  title  page.  It  was 
entered  in  the  Stationers'  Register  April  1593,  and 
then  issued  to  the  world  with  a  Latin  motto  taken 
from  Ovid,  in  which  the  poet  claims  to  turn  away 
from  the  taste  of  the  populace  (this  is  supposed  to 
be  a  side-glance  at  the  stage  of  the  time),  so  that 
henceforth  he  will  quaff  only  Castaly  's  pure  inspir- 
ation. Thus  Shakespeare  seems  disguisedly  to  hint 
a  new  turn  in  his  poetic  vocation  aside  from  the 
drama — he  is  making  a  fresh  experiment  with  his 
Genius. 

The  same  fact  is  at  least  hinted  in  the  dedication 
of  Venus  and  Adonis  to  a  noble  patron,  the  Earl  of 
Southampton.  And  if  this  *  *  first  heir  of  my  inven- 
tion" finds  the  favor  which  he  hopes  with  the 
lordly  aristocrat,  **I  vow  to  take  advantage  of  all 
idle  hours  till  I  have  honored  you  with  some  graver 
labor. ' '    Here  is  evidently  some  grand  poetical  plan 


220  SEAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DRAMA. 

touched  upon;  possibly  the  forthcoming  Lucrece  is 
the  allusion,  but  more  probable  is  it  that  the  loftier 
design  of  a  great  national  Epos  was  floating  before 
the  poet's  imagination,  roused  perhaps  by  rivalry 
with  Spenser's  Fairy  Queen.  But  if  this  present 
work  ''prove  deformed",  then  I  shall  ''never  after 
ear  so  barren  a  land  ' ',  in  which  statement  seems  to 
lurk  a  wee  premonitory  doubt  concerning  this  new 
poetic  tendency.  At  any  rate  we  may  here  see 
Shakespeare  looking  away  from  his  more  plebeian 
dramatic  career  to  an  aristocratic  patronage,  which 
at  the  time  could  only  be  reached  through  the 
Italian  vogue  then  at  its  height. 

Can  we  catch  some  faint  glimpse  of  the  poet's 
spiritual  phasis  at  this  moment?  He  had,  we  may 
conjecture,  returned  recently  from  his  trip  to  Italy, 
and  was  full  of  its  influence.  We  have  timed  that 
trip  about  1592-3.  And  his  poetic  creativity,  we 
may  well  believe,  could  not  have  lain  idle  under 
such  a  stimulating  environment.  He  was  still  in 
his  freshest  genetic  years,  twenty  eight  or  nine  of 
age,  and  could  not  help  poetizing.  Why  should 
he  not  take  some  of  his  unfinished  work  along  with 
him,  as  did  his  poetic  wprld-brother  Goethe  many 
decades  afterwards,  who  wrought  over,  remodeled, 
and  versified  his  Iphigenia  and  his  Tasso  in  the 
beautiful  Southern  sunland  of  genius.  Now  we 
are  going  to  think  or  dream  (if  one  wishes  to  say 
so)  that  Shakespeare  carried  with  him  to  Italy  his 
Venus  and  Adonis,  which  he  revised  and  perhaps 
rewrote   in   the  delicious  but   languorous   Italian 


THE    EPICAL    SHAKESPEABE  221 

clime,  for  that  is  the  unique  atmosphere  of  the 
aforesaid  poem.  When  he  came  back  to  England, 
full  of  his  new  poesy,  he  applied  to  an  old  friend, 
Richard  Field  formerly  of  Stratford,  but  now  a 
London  printer  and  successful  bookseller,  to  pub- 
lish his  latest,  and  in  his  view,  finest  production, 
under  the  highest  possible  auspices,  a  great  Earl 's 
patronage.  Moreover  this  first  edition  of  Venus 
and  Adonis  shows  at  all  points  special  care  in  its 
typographical  execution ;  only  one  copy  of  it  exists 
(in  the  Bodleian),  which,  however,  is  declared  by 
the  competent  to  be  the  best  printed  book  among 
the  original  editions  of  Shakespeare,  who  doubtless 
now  read  his  own  proof-sheets.  Here  it  may  be 
jotted  down  by  the  way  that  Shakespeare's  fre- 
quent employment  of  printing  processes  in  his  writ- 
ings has  led  to  the  supposition  that  when  he  first 
came  to  London,  he  worked  for  a  while  with  printer 
Field,  his  fellow-townsman  and  family  friend.  In 
a  few  weeks  the  alert  youth  could  have  learned  to 
pick  type  and  handle  a  press,  as  many  another  has 
done  since.  But  his  stay,  if  it  ever  took  place, 
could  not  have  been  long:  he  had  a  different  bee 
buzzing  in  his  brain. 

The  poet 's  early  favorite,  Ovid 's  Metamorphoses, 
furnishes  the  story  and  the  motive,  though  not  the 
verse  and  the  poetic  atmosphere;  these  have  been 
imparted  by  the  Italian  Renascence  to  Shakespeare, 
who  breathes  into  such  transmitted  material  his 
own  poetic  individuality,  as  this  manifests  itself 
in  his  adolescence.    Of  course  for  the  origin  of  the 


222  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

tale  of  Venus  and  Adonis  we  have  to  go  back  to  all- 
creative,  embryonic  Hellas,  whose  pastoral  poets, 
notably  Theocritus  and  Bion,  made  use  of  it,  and 
from  these  the  Roman  poets  caught  it  up,  and  scat- 
tered it  throughout  cultured  Europe.  Ovid's  tale 
of  the  wooing  of  the  unwilling  Hermaphroditus  by 
the  love-shent  maiden  Salmacis  (Book  IV.  Meta- 
morphoses) is  the  chief  source,  though  other  pass- 
ages contribute.  Thus  we  observe  the  poet  to  seize 
an  universal  Mythus  first  bubbling  up  in  antique 
Greece,  and  then  streaming  down  through  Rome 
into  the  renascent  and  modern  world,  along  with 
the  flow  of  civilisation  itself. 

The  psychical  characteristic  of  the  poem  is  the 
soul's  appealing  resignation  to  sensuous  passion 
on  part  of  the  woman  (or  goddess),  while  the 
youthful  object  of  it  resists.  A  personal  experience 
we  may  again  glimpse  in  these  warm  prolonged 
love-harangues;  Anne  Hathaway  will  keep  flitting 
through  the  shape  and  the  hot  implorations  of 
Venus.  Another  Stratford  impress  is  everywhere 
stamped  upon  the  poem :  the  rural  scenery,  the  de- 
scription of  tame  and  wild  animals,  the  country 
sports  and  occupations,  as  well  as  the  ready  agri- 
cultural lore. 

But  when  we  come  to  sip  of  the  verse,  we  find  it 
to  taste  of  Italy ;  the  meter,  the  rhyme,  the  stanza, 
the  aroma  are  Italianized.  The  poet's  own  cotem- 
poraries  seem  especially  to  have  caught  this  dulcet 
poetic  melody,  which  attuned  the  ear  of  the  time  to 
its  luscious  tingle  of  tones.     The  critic  Francis 


THE    EPICAL     SHAKESPEABE  223 

Meres,  doubtless  acquainted  with  Shakespeare  per- 
sonally, celebrates  Venus  and  Adonis  by  name,  pre- 
luding that  ''the  sweet  and  witty  soul  of  Ovid  lives 
in  mellifluous  and  honey-tongued  Shakespeare" — a 
warble  of  words  worthj^  of  the  singer  himself.  And 
the  little  rhymester  Richard  Barnfield  (1598)  put 
to  the  fore  the  same  quality:  Shakespeare's 
' '  honey-flowing  vein. ' '  For  this  same  reason  Venus 
and  Adonis  shows  a  deep  spiritual  and  poetical  kin- 
ship with  Romeo  and  Juliet^  the  sweet  and  some- 
times saccharine  Italian  love-tragedy  of  the  still 
youthful  poet. 

The  chief  objection  to  this  delicious  bit  of  love's 
ecstasy  will  always  be  its  unmorality;  not  a  few 
good  people  will  strengthen  the  word  to  immorality. 
The  work  may  be  termed  Shakespeare's  Art  of 
Love,  in  which  he  follows  perchance  a  little  too 
exuberantly  his  classic  mentor,  lascivious  Ovid.  It 
is  the  very  riot  of  erotic  adolescence;  we  feel  that 
the  poet  uses  the  shy  Adonis  as  a  foil  for  the  amor- 
ous raptures  of  Venus,  who  really  voices  the  young 
Shakespeare  in  his  unbridled  sensuous  mood.  Pos- 
sibly here,  too,  lurks  some  secret  rivalry  with  Mar- 
lowe, who  also  has  turned  away  for  a  time  from  the 
drama  and  started  to  writing  a  love-idyl,  his  Hero 
and  Leander,  which  is  found  inserted  in  the  Sta- 
tioners' Register  not  far  from  the  date  of  Venus 
and  Adonis.  Moreover,  the  effect  of  a  visit  to  Italy 
in  exciting  an  erotic  overflow  of  verse  may  be  re- 
marked even  of  the  middle-aged,  well-balanced 
Goethe,  especially  in  his  love-drunk  Roman  Elegies. 


224  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

'  Hard  upon  the  appearance  of  Venus  and  Adonis 
followed  the  cataclysmic  tragedy  of  Marlowe  him- 
self, which  sent  a  life-determining  shock  into 
Shakespeare's  very  being,  since  he  now  feels  the 
warning  in  his  own  case,  and  at  once  proceeds  to 
set  forth  in  writ  Love's  fate,  for  the  sake  of  his 
own  salvation.  Let  ns  never  forget  that  his  literary 
utterance  is  propelled  from  his  deepest  experience, 
and  becomes  his  soul's  confession  and  absolution. 
Within  a  year  he  has  completed  his  Lucrece,  or  the 
nemesis  of  Love's  native  urge,  which  work  is  not 
without  its  remedial  word  for  the  poet's  own  inner 
restoration  from  his  previous  excess. 

We  should  not  fail  to  note  that  before  the  con- 
elusion  we  hear  even  in  voluptuous  Venus  and 
Adonis  the  sharp  admonition  against  the  lurking 
peril  (line  793) 

Call  it  not  Love,  for  Love  to  heaven  is  fled, 
Since  sweating  Lust  on  earth  usurped  his  name, 
Under  whose  simple  semblance  he  has  fed 
Upon  fresh  beauty  blotting  it  with  blame    .    .    . 
Love  surfeits  not.  Lust  like  a  glutton  dies, 
Love  is  all  truth.  Lust  full  of  forged  lies. 

These  lines  might  be  prefixed  as  a  motto  to  the  com- 
ing poem  of  Lucrece,  whose  moralizing  character 
they  foreshow,  and  whose  diabolic  incarnation  of 
Lust  (in  Tarquin)  they  almost  prophesy. 

2.  Lucrece.  May  9th  1594  there  was  entered  in 
the  Stationers '  Register  ' '  A  Book  entitled  the  Rav- 
ishment of  Lucrece",  and  soon  afterwards  it  was 


TEE    EPICAL    SHAKESPEABE  225 

published  under  the  simple  name  ''Lucrece", 
though  the  running  title  on  the  top  of  the  page 
gave  the  fuller  ' '  Rape  of  Lucrece ' '.  Thus  in  about 
one  year  and  one  month  after  the  registration  of 
Venus  and  Adonis,  appears  this  new,  and  longer 
and  more  elaborate  poem  of  Shakespeare,  who 
writes  in  front  of  it  a  second  dedication  to  his 
noble  patron,  the  Earl  of  Southampton,  rather 
more  fulsome  than  the  first,  which  was  not  lacking 
in  that  attribute.  But  this  is  the  poet 's  last  known 
dedication,  and  his  indulgent  reader  feels  amply- 
satisfied  with  these  two  samples. 

The  poem  gives  some  signs  of  haste,  and  of  being 
written  under  a  single  continuous  inspiration ;  thus 
on  the  whole  its  spiritual  unity  is  more  pronounced 
than  that  of  Venus  and  Adonis.  Still  it  has  expan- 
sion overfull,  but  turned  inwardly  and  subjective 
rather  than  outwardly  descriptive  of  natural  ob- 
jects. Very  little  of  the  Stratford  landscape  one 
finds  here,  thus  it  contrasts  in  local  color  with  the 
previous  poem,  which  is  so  panoramic  in  scenery. 
Both  are  equally  diffuse,  though  in  opposite  direc- 
tions. 

But  it  is  the  moral  difference  between  these  twin 
productions,  which  becomes  still  more  striking  and 
profound  than  the  physical.  Indeed  Lucrece  is  not 
only  the  counterpart  but  the  counterstroke  to 
Venus  and  Adonis.  The  two  women  perform  oppo- 
site female  functions:  Venus  is  the  woman  as 
sensuous  temptress  of  man,  Lucrece  is  the  woman 
as  the  moral  censoress  of  man,  here  tragic  and  so 


226  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

the  more  impressive.  Both  these  feminine  contrarie- 
ties became  well-known  to  Shakespeare  through 
immediate  experience,  and  both  he  will  employ 
hereafter,  in  comedy  as  well  as  in  tragedy.  Let 
the  reader  himself  name  the  poet's  two  probable 
models  taken  from  the  Shakespearian  household  at 
Stratford. 

The  story  of  Lucrece  is  uniquely  Roman,  which 
the  school-boy  poet  could  find  in  his  Ovid  and  in 
the  historian  Livy.  From  these  ancient  writers  it 
has  been  transmitted  into  the  world's  literature  of 
all  ages.  In  England  before  Shakespeare  Chaucer 
had  poetized  it,  and  other  authors  had  given  to  it 
manifold  literary  forms.  So  the  theme  had  won  a 
universality  like  that  of  Rome  itself.  In  fact  these 
two  female  images,  the  Goddess  Venus  and  the 
mortal  Lucrece,  may  be  said  to  represent  Greece 
and  Rome  respectively  in  their  different  charac- 
ters: that  sensuous  Greek  harmony  between  man 
and  nature  is  divine — Venus;  while  that  stern 
Roman  virtue — Lucrece — which  subjects  nature  to 
itself,  especially  its  own,  will  in  the  end  subdue 
Hellas  and  her  beautiful  Gods  along  with  the  whole 
world.  Thus  the  poet  here  projects  into  persons 
the  two  diverse  souls  of  the  antique  classic  world, 
from  which  he  has  derived  his  earliest  culture 
already  at  Stratford. 

Again  town-friend  Richard  Field  was  his  printer, 
and  published  Lucrece,  though  Field  seems  soon  to 
have  transferred  his  Shakespearian  copyrights, 
probably  for  a  good  price.    Venus  and  Adonis  was 


TEE    EPICAL    SHAKESPEABE  227 

peculiarly  popular,  as  if  the  day's  best  seller,  six 
editions  being  called  for  in  ten  years ;  Lucfece  did 
not  sell  so  well  by  any  means,  as  twenty-two  years 
passed  before  the  fifth  edition  came  out.  Possibly 
this  fact  had  some  influence  upon  the  poet's  cessa- 
tion of  his  epical  stream — he  having  felt  now  his 
public's  pulse,  and  having  found  his  own  limits. 
There  is  no  doubt,  however,  that  Shakespeare  first 
became  a  famous  author  through  his  very  successful 
Venus  and  Adonis,  whose  general  trend  indeed  mir- 
rors the  time's  mood.  Still  the  i)oet  could  hardly 
help  feeling  that  such  an  Italianizing  epical  turn 
was  not  his  true  and  eternal  call,  nor  his  people's 
right  utterance,  being  rather  a  transitory  freak  of 
the  folk,  an  imitated  un-English  thing,  not  Eng- 
land's enduring  spirit  embodied  in  an  enduring 
form.  So  we  may  conceive  him  now  looking  out 
upon  his  new  future. 

We  are  made  to  feel  in  Lucrece  the  Roman 
tendency  to  the  abstract,  if  we  compare  it  with  the 
Hellenic  concreteness  which  dominates  Venus  and 
Adonis.  The  superabundant  Roman  gift  of  osseous 
personification  is  duly  exemplified  in  the  addresses 
to  Opportunity,  to  Time,  to  Night,  and  to  other 
skeleton  figures,  which  are  made  to  rattle  their 
bones  in  a  kind  of  death's  dance.  But  the  most 
elaborate  Roman  decoration  is  the  painting  or  pic- 
tured panorama  which  shows  the  destruction  of 
Troy,  with  the  sinister  image  of  perjured  Sinon, 
evidently  derived  from  Virgil.  The  parallel  be- 
tween the  Rape  of  Helen  and  the  Rape  of  Lucrece 


228  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

is  not  neglected ;  each  has  its  fatal  personal  as  well 
as  political  consequences;  and  each  heroine,  the 
Greek  and  the  Roman,  represents  her  country's 
ideal.  This  long  episode  of  Troy's  fall  is  a  little 
epos  in  itself,  and  seems  here  an  insertion  from 
some  other  work  or  plan  of  the  poet,  which  may 
well  reach  back  to  Stratford  when  he  read  the 
Aeneid  under  master  Simon  Hunt,  who  would 
surely  take  the  time  to  amplify  the  story  to  his  en- 
thusiastic and  promising  pupil.  Here,  however,  it 
is  duly  Italianized  in  meter,  strophe,  and  rhyme, 
and  in  tongueyness. 

Still  despite  these  boyhood  reminiscences  in  the 
poem,  they  are  all  transformed  and  made  to  cluster 
around  the  form  and  deed  of  the  lust-driven  Tar- 
quin,  who  seems  the  least  ancient,  most  real  person 
of  the  action,  and  evidently  is  the  direct  source  of 
the  composition,  whose  first  and  freshest  part  tells 
of  him  and  of  his  conflict  both  inner  and  outer. 
For  conscience  is  here  reproaching  him  as  it  did 
Richard  III,  and  we  are  again  told  its  name  and 
its  battle: 

Thus  graceless  holds  he  disputation 
'Tween  frozen  conscience  and  hot-burning  will, 
And  with  good  thoughts  makes  dispensation 
Urging  the  worser  sense  for  vantage  still. 

In  fact  we  hear  more  than  one  soliloquy  of  Tarquin 
which  recalls  the  Mephistophelian  defiance  of 
Richard  III,  though  without  the  self-caricaturing 
irony  which  the  latter  sprays  over  himself  so  gen- 


TBE    EPICAL     SHAKESPEABE  229 

erously.  For  instance  take  this  meditation  of  Tar- 
quin  upon  his  deed's  consequence  (1.  488)  : 

I  have  debated  even  in  my  soul 

What  wrong,  what  shame,  what  sorrow  I 

shall  breed; 
But  nothing  can  affection's  course  control, 
Or  stop  the  headlong  fury  of  his  speed ; 
I  know  repentant  tears  ensue  the  deed, 
Reproach,  disdain,  and  deadly  enmity ; 
Yet  strive  I  to  embrace  my  infamy. 

A  decided  streak  of  Richard  Crookback  lurks  in 
this  verse,  though  his  diabolism  was  ambition,  not 
salacity.  And  we  shall  repeat  that  we  cannot  help 
seeing  Marlowe's  own  figure  often  metamorphose 
into  that  of  Tarquin  doing  the  fatal  deed  of  lust, 
with  the  retributive  backstroke  of  nemesis  common 
to  both.  Such  (we  think)  was  the  living  reality 
which  first  drove  the  poet  to  seize  and  elaborate 
the  present  theme. 

This  is  the  only  poem  of  Shakespeare  which 
bears  the  sole  name  of  a  woman  as  the  heroine.  Not 
a  drama  of  his  gets  its  title  from  its  female  char- 
acter, though  she  be  often  the  foremost  personage 
of  the  play.  Whenever  the  woman  appears  in  the 
caption,  she  is  coupled  with  the  man;  Lucrece  is 
the  one  exception.  But  now  the  poet  is  to  bring 
before  us  in  a  new  piece  his  third  epical  woman,  so 
we  may  call  her  at  least  for  the  nonce. 

3.  A  Lover's  Complaint.  First  let  it  be  ex- 
plained that  this  lover  is  not  a  male  but  a  female, 


230  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

a  sad  young  maid  who  speaks  her  girlhood  *s  deepest 
agony  through  love's  betrayal.  The  present  poem 
was  first  printed  in  1609  with  the  Sonnets,  which 
it  follows  as  a  kind  of  Appendix.  Thus  it  has  the 
same  external  evidence  for  its  authenticity  as  the 
Sonnets,  and  with  some  of  them,  but  not  with  all, 
it  shows  a  certain  affinity  in  content,  style,  and 
mood.  Of  course  its  Shakespearian  origin  has  been 
often  challenged,  but  on  grounds  purely  subjective 
and  insufficient,  as  we  regard  the  matter. 

In  its  general  theme  as  well  as  in  its  poetic  form 
it  attaches  itself  to  the  two  preceding  poems,  of 
which  epical  group  it  may  accordingly  be  set  down 
as  the  third  member.  It  gives  another  phase  of 
Shakespeare's  treatment  of  love,  especially  of  the 
woman  now  overborne  by  this  passion,  which  also 
involves  the  man  as  her  sexed  counterpart.  In  the 
present  poem  we  hear  the  oft-told  story  of  the 
blooming  adolescent  girl  with  her  first  resistance  to 
her  youth's  natural  urge,  then  her  gradual  yielding 
till  final  submission.  Somehow  in  her  unhappy 
words  we  are  fain  to  catch  a  far-off  echo  of 
Ophelia 's  lament : 

And  I,  of  ladies  most  deject  and  wretched 
That  sucked  the  honey  of  his  music  vows. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  concerning  the  numerous 
defects  of  the  poem.  Not  only  is  the  subject  along 
with  its  treatment  hackneyed,  though  ever  renew- 
able in  the  human  heart,  but  also  it  shows  itself 
quite  everywhere  a  sketch  as  well  as  a  fragment. 


TEB    EPICAL    SHAKESPEABE  231 

Underneath  all  the  supposed  lapses  of  the  printer, 
we  can  see  that  its  language  needs  to  be  thoroughly 
overhauled  and  clarified,  as  if  it  were  only  a  first 
rough  draught.  Then  it  breaks  off  in  the  middle, 
without  any  right  conclusion.  The  betrayer  does 
not  get  back  his  own,  after  the  usual  Shakespearian 
poetic  justice.  At  the  beginning  there  seems  to  be 
preparation  for  a  long  poem:  two  characters  are 
introduced  with  some  detail — the  secret  onlooking 
listener  '*V\  and  the  ''reverend  man"  who  is 
seated  at  the  maiden's  side  listening  in  complete 
silence  to  her  doleful  story — both  of  whom  thence- 
forth are  dropped  without  a  word.  Sketchy  and 
fragmentary  is  the  production,  though  that  is  no 
reason  for  taking  it  away  from  Shakespeare,  who 
has  left  many  other  sketches  and  fragments  even 
in  the  middle  of  his  better  dramas.  He  is  often  in- 
complete as  well  as  careless,  possibly  through  haste ; 
he  does  not  always  finish,  he  has  his  torsos  like 
Michelangelo,  like  Goethe.  Now  these  torsos  are 
specially  interesting  and  suggestive  to  the  student 
of  his  spiritual  evolution.  The  imperfect  sketch 
may  show  the  artist  struggling  in  his  workshop, 
which  biographic  revelation  the  perfect  work  tends 
to  eliminate  or  smooth  away. 

Such  a  Shal^espearian  torso  is  to  our  mind  this 
vaguely  named  piece  A  Lover's  Complaint,  supply- 
ing a  link,  undoubtedly  a  small  oiie  but  real,  in 
the  chain  of  the  poet's  development.  About  1609, 
(or  perhaps  somewhat  before)  Thomas  Thorpe  a 
well-known  publisher  of  the  time  got  hold  of  Shake- 


232  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

speare's  Sonnets  along  with  this  poem,  both  in 
manuscript  doubtless.  Now  we  dare  conjecture 
that  the  poet  himself  turned  these  loose  pieces  of 
writing  over  to  a  publisher  whom  he  knew,  and 
who  would  issue  them  to  the  public  for  what  they 
were  wo'rth.  On  the  whole,  they  were  things  which 
the  author  had  outgrown;  he  had  quit  sonneting 
by  1609,  and  the  present  rhymed  and  stanzaed 
epopee  in  Italian  style  belonged  to  an  earlier  phase 
of  his  growth,  some  fifteen  years  back,  say  about 
1594,  year  of  Lucrece's  birth.  So  runs  our  con- 
struction of  this  undocumented  time,  an  imaginary 
biography,  as  such  rehabilitation  of  lost  parts  of 
life  has  been  scoffingly  scored.  Sir  Sidney  Lee  in 
this  connection  affirms  (Life  of  Shakespeare  p.  161, 
new  edition)  that  *' Shakespeare,  except  in  the  case 
of  his  two  narrative  poems  made  no  effort  to  pub- 
lish any  of  his  works",  a  statement  wholly  un- 
proved and  as  purely  conjectural  as  any  so-called 
imaginary  biography.  Very  unlikely  too  is  such  a 
feeling  of  indifference  toward  the  printed  page  in 
the  psychology  of  authorship,  as  Sir  Sidney  might 
discover  by  his  own  example.  The  unbiased  reader 
can  detect  Shakespeare  carefully  looking  after  the 
publication  of  several  of  his  dramas,  especially  the 
greatest  one,  that  second  Quarto  of  Hamlet.  And 
what  is  more  natural  or  even  praiseworthy?  Con- 
sequently we  shall  conceive  William  Shakespeare, 
then  thinking  soon  to  quit  London  and  to  retire  to 
Stratford,  as  he  one  day  gathers  up  his  old  tran- 
iscended    papers   of   life's    experience,    and    hands 


TEE    EPICAL    SHAKEBPEAEE  233 

them  over  to  publisher  Thorpe,  who  grasps  the 
prize  and  in  his  dedication  gratefully  acclaims  the 
author  ''as  our  ever-living  poet."  Bravo  for  en- 
thusiastic Thorpe  with  his  little  snatch  of  prophecy, 
even  if  it  be  also  publishing  puffery.  Moreover  this 
laudation  would  seem  to  indicate  that  Shakespeare 
was  on  good  terms  with  his  publisher,  who  could 
hardly  have  gotten  and  printed  the  manuscript  in 
any  clandestine  way,  its  writer  being  in  the  city 
and  well-known. 

Another  noteworthy  item  about  A  Lover's  Com- 
plaint  should  be  taken  to  mind:  it  employs  no 
Greek  IMythus  (like  Venus  and  Adonis  J  no  Roman 
Tale  (like  Lucrece)  for  its  scaffolding,  but  it  intro- 
duces its  one  main  character  telling  her  own  story 
directly  in  i)erson.  From  this  angle  of  view  it  re- 
sembles the  modern  Novel  or  Short  Story  more 
closely  than  the  old  myth-borne  poetry,  and  in 
spirit  it  is  more  lyrical  than  epical,  though  it  re- 
tains the  form — meter,  stanza,  rhyme — of  the 
Shakespearian  epopee.  Hence  it  is  to  be  classed 
with  the  latter,  though  we  feel  in  it  a  transition 
out  of  that  stage  of  the  poet.  We  may  also  observe 
that  Shakespeare  is  getting  more  interested  in  the 
psychology  than  in  the  mere  story  of  his  person- 
ages ;  he  is  turning  to  inner  j)ortraiture,  and  paying 
less  regard  to  incident ;  so  we  can  forecast  his  final 
absorption  in  the  characterful  new  drama  as  his 
most  adequate  expression.  Indeed  he  carries  his 
self-analysis  here  too  far,  and  becomes  diffuse  and 
wearisome;  he. needs  the  stage  to  put  the  curb  on 


234  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DRAMA. 

his  riotous  fancy  as  well  as  on  his  long-winded  sub- 
jectivity, which  in  fact  overflows  to  excess  all  his 
epical  experiments.  We  may  think  that  he  dis- 
covers this  excess  himself,  and  so  breaks  off  in  the 
middle  of  his  last  piece  for  good.  He  will  write  no 
more  epopees,  he  has  tested  and  appropriated  their 
value  for  his  complete  evolution.  His  pen,  if  not 
restrained  by  the  outer  action  of  the  theatre,  runs 
away  with  his  own  genius,  which  he  has  found  to 
be  dramatic  to  the  core. 

4.  Retrospect.  Such  is  the  epical  Shakespeare 
with  his  three  Idyllic  Epopees,  as  we  have  labeled, 
perhaps  with  some  audacity,  the  man  and  a  special 
phase  of  his  work  at  this  time,  which  is,  in  general, 
his  imitative,  experimental,  appropriative  Epoch. 
He  visits  Italy  and  Italianizes  his  creative  power 
in  a  number  of  ways.  This  experience  remains  a 
permanent  factor  in  his  life  and  achievement;  we 
shall  note  an  Italian  strand  woven  through  his 
entire  Pan-drama  to  its  last  example.  Even  in  his 
language  we  find  him  conjoining  Northern  strength 
with  Southern  sweetness,  blending  the  open,  vow- 
elled  flow  of  Italy's  speech  with  the  less  fluid  con- 
sonantal tongue  of  Teutonic  England.  Moreover 
that  Mediterranean  culture,  the  original  fountain- 
head  and  millenial  preserver  and  propagator  of 
European  civilisation,  he  would  know,  realize  in 
himself,  and  transmute  into  his  own  productivity. 
Of  this  considerable  discipline  of  the  poet,  the  three 
foregoing  Epopees  form  a  very  significant  stadium. 
They  may   also  be   regarded   as   showing   Shake- 


THE    EPICAL     SHAKESPEARE  235 

speare  's  early  exercise  in  word-gymnastics ;  he  often 
riots  in  verbal  expression  simply  for  its  own  sweet 
sake;  we  may  catch  him  caressing  if  not  actually 
kissing  his  own  dear  vocables,  or  at  least  making 
them  kiss  one  another  in  rhyme,  assonance,  and 
alliteration. 

Three  women  are  found  at  the  heart  of  the  three 
poems,  and  show  three  attitudes  toward  love  which 
is  the  central  theme  of  each — the  woman  tempting, 
the  woman  resisting,  the  woman  yielding.  The  poet 
was  evidently  working  through  in  himself  the  sex- 
experience  of  his  time,  indeed  of  his  race.  All 
three  women  are  disillusioned,  disappointed,  un- 
happy in  the  outcome — a  decided  contrast  to  Shake- 
speare's  treatment  of  his  female  characters  in  his 
forthcx>ming  comedies.  Perhaps  here  we  may  find 
another  reason  why  he  drops  his  epical  experiment. 

One  result  is  certain :  after  this  Second  Epoch 
of  his  Apprenticeship,  which  concludes  about 
1595-6,  he  devoted  himself  to  the  drama  more  in- 
tently and  exclusively  than  ever,  as  if  he  had  found 
the  right  vehicle  of  his  genius.  We  may  well  seek 
in  his  poems,  for  we  have  no  other  data,  to  visualize 
this  epochal  change,  or  return  to  the  theatre  from 
these  idyllic  tales  of  love.  A  few  grounds  for  such 
a  change  we  may  set  down.  (1)  It  is  likely  that  he 
found  that  his  special  patron  Southampton  and 
probably  his  patronage  generally  preferred  his 
plays,  and  with  good  reason.  (2)  The  drama  was 
native,  English,  not  an  exotic,  not  Italian,  and  had 
thus  a  far  deeper  appeal  to  the  age  and  to  the  poet 's 


236  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

folk,  and  also  to  the  poet  himself  ultimately.  (3) 
Moreover  he  discovers  that  he  can  take  up  into  his 
dramas  the  Italian  element  of  the  Renascence,  mak- 
ing it  a  vital  part  of  his  total  dramatic  organism. 
Thus  he  renders  his  pro(iuctivity  universal,  causing 
it  to  embrace  both  Northern  and  Southern  Europe 
with  their  respective  world-views  and  literatures. 
Here  may  be  witnessed  the  grand  coming  uni- 
versality of  Shakespeare,  who  has  sought  not  only 
to  conjoin  externally  but  to  make  intergrow  into 
one  ideal  poetic  body  those  ever-fighting  entities, 
Roma  and  Teutonia,  who  have  just  finished  the 
bloodiest,  and  possibly  the  fatalest  of  their  duels, 
in  the  so-called  world-war;  which  duels  have  been 
recurring  off  and  on  for  the  last  two  thousand 
years  between  the  same  combatants.  Shakespeare, 
the  mediating  poet,  has  at  least  ideally  harmonized 
the  all-devouring  contradiction  which  seems  to  be 
ever  yawning  in  the  European  folk-soul  between 
Teutonism  and  Latinism. 

Now  this  doubleness  and  indeed  antagonism  of 
the  Teutonic  and  the  Romanic  lurks  deeply  in  Eng- 
land's spirit,  being  voiced  primarily  by  her  double 
yet  integrated  language,  which  is  composed  of  those 
two  originally  hostile  elements  usually  called 
Anglo-Saxon  and  Latin.  But  this  linguistic  and 
spiritual  dualism  finds  its  supreme  reconciliation 
realized  in  the  speech  and  art  of  Shakespeare, 
whose  book,  therefore,  becomes  an  image,  and  we 
may  hope,  a  prophecy  of  the  final  peace  of  Europe. 
Thus  our  mediatorial  poet  prefigures  not  only  in 


TEE    LYBICAL    SHAKESPEABE  237 

the  content  of  his  words  but  in  their  very  form  and 
composition,  a  unified  and  pacified  world  which 
may  yet  conclude  to  talk  also  a  unified  and  pacified 
speech,  namely  English. 

Still  further,  through  this  excursion  abroad  in 
distant  and  alien  fields  Shakespeare  is  brought  to 
discern  the  true  scope  of  his  genius,  which  he  now 
recognizes  to  lie  fully  in  the  drama.  He  was  astray 
and  in  doubt  for  several  years,  but  just  through 
his  wandering  he  has  discovered  himself  and  also 
his  world.  Often  he  has  expressed  this  idea  of  a 
return  and  recovery  of  himself  after  a  time  of  inner 
estrangement : 

If  I  have  ranged, 
Like  him  that  travels,  I  return  again 
Just  to  the  time,  not  with  the  time  exchanged — 
So  that  myself  bring  water  for  my  stain. 

Thus  he  celebrates  his  self-healing  power  over  his 
spiritual  scission  and  aberration,  employing  the 
first  person,  the  subject,  the  Self  in  its  own  right 
(Sonnet  109).  But  this  introduces  us  to  a  new 
kind  of  Shakespearian  expression,  not  epical,  not 
dramatic,  but  lyrical,  of  which  the  poet  has  not 
failed  to  furnish  to  us  his  distinctive  contribution. 
Accordingly  it  is  our  next  duty  to  take  a  glimpse 
of  him  from  such  a  different  viewpoint. 

II. 

The  Lyrical  Shakespeare. 

The  name  suggests  primarily  the  singer  with  his 
lyre  giving  expression  to  his  immediate  feelings  and 


238  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFEDBAMA 

experiences  in  harmonized  speech.  Accordingly  the 
Self  or  Ego  of  the  poet  becomes  the  center  of  utter- 
ance in  one  form  or  other.  Thus  Lyricism  in  its 
genesis  and  prime  significance  we  stress  as  sub- 
jective, dealing  with  the  manifold  upbursts  of  the 
individual  subject  in  joy  and  sorrow,  in  love  with 
its  rises  and  falls,  in  life  and  in  death.  The  lyrist 
has  to  catch  in  the  musical  word  the  first  gush  of 
man's  ever-seething  emotional  underworld,  and 
then  to  sing  it  attuned  to  his  instrument.  This 
basic  character  of  Lyricism  will  remain  amid  all 
its  thousandfold  diversities  both  of  form  and  con- 
tent. For  the  lyrical  consciousness  is  on  the  whole 
separative,  particularized,  atomic. 

Shakespeare  as  the  universal  poet  must  be  also 
lyrical,  weaving  such  a  poetic  strand  throughout 
his  entire  work,  as  a  necessary  element  of  his 
genius.  He  is  likewise  subject,  an  Ego,  creatively 
and  colossally  individualized  just  in  his  univers- 
ality. Hence  we  are  to  observe  his  outward  epical 
narrative  breaking  up  into  little  lyrical  bits  of  in- 
ward exi)erience. 

But  before  we  go  into  the  details  of  this  phase  of 
his  creativity,  we  are  to  recognize  that  Lyricism  of 
itself  forms  a  world-historical  stage  in  the  race's 
literary  evolution.  Such  a  stage  is  most  clearly 
manifested  in  antique,  little,  but  always  embryonic 
Hellas,  which  shows  the  one  vast  Homeric  Epos 
gradually  with  time  separating  itself  into  number- 
less distinct  lyrics  whose  multitudinous  singers  in- 
cluded both  sexes,  for  the  woman  is  peculiarly  sub- 


THE    LYRICAL    SHAKESPEARE  239 

jeetive,  and  by  nature  is  inclined  to  express  hersell 
lyrically.  Accordingly  we  read  of  that  early  Greek 
songstress  Corinna  of  Tanagra  who  won  the  lyric 
prize  over  greatest  Pindar  five  times  according  to 
tradition.  But  far  more  enduring  in  fame  and 
loftier  in  genius  looms  up  the  ancient  Lesbian 
poetess  Sappho,  whose  delicious  tidbits  of  love- 
verse  to  her  Phaon  are  still  read  with  responsive 
thrills,  being  translated  into  all  tongues,  and  re- 
produced with  many  variations  around  the  globe 
to-day.  Still  it  will  have  to  be  confessed  that  a 
man,  Pindar  of  Thebes,  remains  the  culmination  of 
this  lyrical  period  of  Greek  Literature.  In  his 
strains  we  may  conceive  the  epical  Gods  of  Homer, 
once  speaking  from  high  Olympus,  to  descend  be- 
low into  the  terrestrial  man  himself  and  thus  to 
become  lyrical,  singing  through  mortal  voice  their 
immortal  decrees. 

But  the  relevant  fact  for  us  is  that  our  Shake- 
speare, in  his  poetic  development,  repeats  or  rather 
reproduces  that  of  Hellas,  the  original  spiritual 
prototype  of  all  Europe;  his  individual  evolution 
re-enacts  the  universal  evolution  of  Poetry  itself. 
No  wonder  that  deepest  instinct  of  his  from  youth 
onwards  sought  to  imitate  and  thus  to  appropriate 
the  creative  process  of  Classic  Literature  as  the 
very  aliment  of  his  productivity.  It  should  here 
be  added  that  the  Grek  poetic  soul,  like  Shake- 
speare's own  soul,  found  its  complete  final  realisa- 
tion in  the  drama. 

The    lyrical    strand    is    seen    weaving    through 


240  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

Shakespeare's  entire  career,  in  various  forms;  it 
must  have  started  with  his  boyhood  at  Stratford, 
it  may  be  traced  bubbling  up  everywhere  in  his 
London  Pan-drama,  and  it  could  hardly  have  quit 
him  in  his  last  retirement  at  Stratford.  Naturally 
during  his  Italian  time  it  Italianized  with  all  the 
rest  of  him;  that  is,  we  may  catch  him  testing  upon 
his  genius  the  lyrical  forms  of  modern  Italy,  one  of 
which,  the  Sonnet  he  seizes  and  makes  his  own  in 
his  own  way  forever. 

Another  point  may  be  here  underscored:  the 
Lyricism  of  Shakespeare  especially  in  the  form  of 
the  Sonnet,  becomes  the  poet's  autobiography 
poetically  expressed.  For  the  lyrical  consciousness 
utters  immediately  its  own  subjective  experiences 
as  they  gush  up  from  the  depths  into  brief  jets  of 
emotional  and  imaginative  speech.  Hence  Shake- 
speare has  written  the  poetical  diary  of  his  life, 
which  is  naturally  the  lyrical,  the  internally  per- 
sonal side  of  his  verse,  as  it  sprays  out  of  his  experi- 
enced underworld  into  warm  irridescent  drops  of 
self-expression  whose  content  is  chiefly  love. 

One  result  of  such  a  scattered,  broken,  desultory 
writ  is  that  it  can  have  little  structural  unity,  such 
as  we  find  in  the  Epos  and  in  the  Drama.  Lyricism 
knows  not  the  grand  architectonic  of  poetry,  and 
so  rears  no  supreme  temple  of  art,  but  remains  more 
or  less  a  pile  of  beautifully  carved  stones,  at  best  a 
tray  of  diamonds. 

I.  Play  Lyrics.  Imbedded  in  the  dramatic 
movement  are  various  lyrical  forms  which  seem 


THE    LYEICAL    SEAKESPEAEE  241 

spontaneously  to  spring  out  of  the  artistic  organism 
to  the  surface.  Especially  the  brief  folk-songs 
throb  forth  a  heart-felt  popular  note,  which  also 
hints  the  character  and  the  situation.  What  can 
give  a  deeper  glimpse  into  the  soul  of  the  betrayed 
Mariana  (Fourth  Act  of  Measure  for  Measure) 
than  the  one  verse  suddenly  attuned: 

Take,  0  take  those  lips  away, 

That  so  sweetly  were  forsworn; 
And  those  eyes,  the  break  of  day, 

Lights  that  do  mislead  the  morn ; 
But  my  kisses  bring  again,  bring  again. 

Seals  of  love,  but  seal  'd  in  vain,  seal  'd 
in  vain. 

Thus  in  a  large  number  of  Shakespeare's  dramas 
lyrical  strains,  rhymed  and  sung,  break  unforcedly 
into  the  spoken  blank-verse  and  prose.  It  seems  as 
if  the  whole  drama  had  a  soul  which  insisted  in 
certain  crises  of  itself  upon  a  quick  musical  utter- 
ance for  its  right  relief.  So  we  may  conceive 
Shakespeare  himself  in  his  work  often  to  start  in- 
stinctively to  singing  out  his  melodious  genius. 
Some  people  like  these  little  lyrical  jets  from  his 
far-down  emotional  underself  better  than  any  other 
part  of  the  poet. 

Then  again  certain  speeches  in  blank-verse  take 
a  lyrical  tone  and  swing  native  to  their  content. 
For  instance  Mercutio's  description  of  Queen  Mab 
and  her  fabled  doings  seem  a  chanted  strain  of 
fantasies  inserted  into  the  action  from  the  outside. 


242  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Indeed  the  whole  pla}^  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  shows 
an  incessant  struggle  or  rivalry  between  the  lyrical 
and  the  dramatic  for  the  poetic  prize,  with  the  re- 
sult of  making  them  both  equal  victors.  In  this 
early  tragedy  we  find  many  lines  externally  at- 
tuned by  end-rhymes;  but  the  best  unrhymed 
passages  have  likewise  a  musical  undertone  croon- 
ing a  soft  rhythmic  accompaniment.  Some  come- 
dies, especially  the  imaginative  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream  and  Tempest,  are  i)ervaded  with  the  very 
soul  of  harmony  which  keeps  overflowing  into  song, 
and  makes  them  more  lyrical  than  dramatic.  Es- 
pecially their  supernatural  beings,  fairies  and 
spirits,  are  endowed  with  a  unique  gift  of  super- 
natural word-music  which  we  may  hear  best  in  the 
strains  of  Puck  and  Ariel.  To  our  feeling  this 
Ariel -song  warbles  the  deepest  note  as  well  as  hints 
the  creative  germ  of  the  whole  poem : 

Full  fathom  five  thy  father  lies, 

Of  his  bones  are  coral  made, 
Those  are  pearls  that  were  his  eyes, 

Nothing  of  him  that  doth  fade. 
But  doth  suffer  a  sea-change 

Into  something  rich  and  strange. 
Sea-nymphs  hourly  ring  his  knell : 

Ding-dong — 
Hark !  now  I  hear  them — Ding-dong,  bell. 

The  grand  transfiguration  of  man 's  earthly  pass- 
ing into  his  eternal  portion  is  here  voiced  in  words 
that  sing  their  own  tune  as  it  were  from  above. 


THE     LTllICAL     SUAKKSFEAliE  243 

And  the  thrilled  reader  fails  not  to  think  of  the 
poet  himself,  the  magical  transfigurer  who  has 
overmade  his  own  fading  life  and  world  into  a 
fadeless  "something  rich  and  strange"  which  we 
still  contemplate.  In  this  little  song,  probably  one 
of  his  last,  singing  out  of  his  last  play,  the  lyrical 
Shakesi>eare  reaches  his  highest  point,  and  hymns 
a  glimpse  from  the  top  of  his  Pisgah  across  the 
"border  into  his  future  fulfilment. 

Besides  these  songs  other  lyrical  forms  can  be 
dug  out  of  the  rich  soil  of  Shakespeare's  dramas — 
such  as  the  ballad,  the  epigram,  the  i)roverb,  even 
the  jingling  doggerel.  But  of  such  fitful,  mostly 
fragmentary  ripples  of  his  Lyricism  we  can  here 
take  no  account. 

II.  Miscellaneous  Poems.  Shakespeare  has 
left  us  a  few  separate  bits  of  verse  which  may  in 
general  be  classed  as  his  poetic  miscellanies,  in  con- 
trast with  the  foregoing  lyrics  intergrown  with  his 
dramas,  and  hardly  separable  from  their  context 
without  some  violence.  Under  this  head  we  may 
begin  with  a  small  collection  of  poems  which  bears 
the  title  of  The  Passionate  Pilgrim,  mostly  though 
not  wholly  composed  of  little  whiffs  of  that  well- 
known  passion  called  love,  twenty  one  of  them  (in 
my  edition),  not  very  ardent  or  deep  or  prolonged. 
The  book  was  first  published  in  1599,  with  the 
name  of  W.  Shakespeare  as  author  on  the  title- 
page,  but  it  contains  pieces  by  other  poets.  Indeed 
the  best  thing  in  the  collection  is  by  Marlowe,  be- 
ginning *'Love  with  me  and  be  my  love'* — an  ex- 


244  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

quisite  lyric  which  keeps  the  name  of  Marlowe 
])opularly  alive  and  known  to-day  more  than  do 
all  his  dramas,  being  found  in  every  good  anthol- 
ogy. A  scrappy  book  of  poetry  of  diverse  quality, 
content,  form  and  authorship  is  this  Passionate 
Pilgrim:  who  put  it  together,  and  how  did  that  old 
printer  get  it?  A  question  insoluble  now,  though 
provocative  of  much  erudition  and  speculation  as 
well  as  of  some  editorial  hebetude. 

So  much,  however,  we  know:  several  of  Shake- 
speare's own  sonnets  are  inserted  here,  for  they 
are  found  also  in  his  other  works.  But  the  most 
interesting  Shakespearian  fact  in  the  whole  scrap- 
book  is  that  four  pieces  (Nos.  4,  6,  9,  11,)  in  sonnet 
form  take  up  and  work  over  phases  of  the  fable  of 
Venus  and  Adonis  after  a  somewhat  tentative 
fashion,  as  if  the  young  author  might  be  testing 
himself  on  his  material.  The  most  natural  con- 
clusion (as  Malone  long  ago  suggested)  is  that 
these  four  sonnets  are  preliminary  studies  for  the 
poet's  Venus  and  Adonis,  and  might  have  been  al- 
ready conceived  if  not  made  at  Stratford,  since 
of  the  scenery  and  experiences  of  his  home-town 
Venus  and  Adonis  is  everywhere  redolent.  If  this 
be  so,  Shakespeare  took  an  early  start  at  sonneting, 
in  fact  some  years  before  he  went  to  Italy,  for 
which  it  was  a  kind  of  overturing  incentive  and 
preparation. 

It  should  be  added  that  the  foregoing  views  run 
counter  to  the  general  trend  of  criticism  upon  tliis 
curious    little    Shakespearian    scrapbook.       Some 


THE     LfUlCAL     SIJAKKSPKABE  245 

writers  deny  Shakespeare's  authorship  of  these 
four  sonnets  altogether,  others  assign  to  him  a  part 
of  them — and  so  on.  Swinburne  with  his  accus- 
tomed dogmatic  violence  damns  the  whole  work  as 
"a  rag-picker's  bag  of  stolen  goods",  angrily 
shouting  that  the  thing  is  purely  a  bookseller's 
piracy  after  the  fact,  and  hence  can  contain  no 
preparatory  sketches  of  the  self -testing  young  poet. 
For  our  part,  we  think  we  find  still  other  indica- 
tions, though  more  veiled,  that  The  Passionate  Pil- 
grim was  a  kind  of  publishing  outlet  for  Shake- 
speare's early  experiments  in  verse,  when  their 
climacteric  had  passed  off  in  1599,  and  when  he 
could  look  back  at  a  stage  of  his  transcended  Self. 
Besides  the  four  mentioned  sonnets,  which  deal  by 
name  with  the  subject  of  Venus  and  Adonis,  we 
count  five  short  poems  employing  the  same  form 
and  meter  which  distinguishes  that  poem — namely 
its  rhymed  pentametral  six-lined  stanza,  along  with 
its  general  literary  tone.  Let  the  reader  peruse  to- 
gether these  five  brief  snatches  of  rhyme  (Nos.  7, 
10,  13,  14,  15,) — he  will  often  be  reminded  of  the 
style  and  mood  of  Venus  and  Adonis.  Hence  these 
five  rather  broken  shapes  of  versicles  we  would 
construe  as  paralipomena  to  the  poet 's  larger  work, 
being  excluded  probably  for  the  sake  of  a  closer 
unity  and  harmony.  In  fact  a  careful  scrutiny  will 
suggest  the  reason  why  the  poet  in  his  final  revision 
resolved  to  cut  out  such  inconsistent  if  not  refrac- 
tory passages.  Of  course  these  five  pieces  have  been 
taken  away  wholly  or  in  part  from  Shakespeare  by 


246  SHAKESPEAKE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

the  critic,  who  has  never  yet  seen  their  true  poetic 
place  in  the  poet's  total  evolution.  For  instance 
our  big  brother  biographer,  Sir  Sidney  Lee, 
learnedly  but  rather  blindly  suggests  that  ''they 
are  from.  Barnfield  's  pen ' ',  an  obscure  weak  goose- 
quill  of  that  Elizabethan  time.  (As  to  the  fact  of 
paralipomena  or  well-composed  verses  left  out  or 
excided  by  a  great  poet  in  final  revision,  let  the  in- 
quisitive reader  compare  those  of  Goethe's  Faust. 
These  have  also  been  translated  by  Bayard  Taylor. 
Note  too  that  such  scattered  omissions  were  after- 
wards collected  and  printed  in  the  doubtless  paral- 
lel case  of  Goethe.) 

Another  very  unique  poem  which  we  place  under 
the  head  of  these  Shakespearian  miscellanies,  is 
that  baffling  fantasia  called  The  Phoenix  and  the 
Turtle  with  thirteen  rhymed  stanzas  of  four  lines 
each,  followed  by  the  Threnos  or  funereal  song 
with  five  stanzas  of  three  rhymed  lines  each.  Thus 
the  poem,  though  of  two  distinct  parts,  is  of  short 
compass,  but  solitary  in  its  species  among  the  works 
of  Shakespeare,  who,  however,  can  be  detected  sing- 
ing kindred  strains  under  other  metered  disguises, 
especially  in  his  Sonnets. 

This  poem  was  first  printed  in  a  new  sample  of 
poetical  scrapbook  (evidently  a  fashion  of  the  time) 
which  is  dated  1601,  hence  two  years  after  the  pre- 
ceding miscellany.  The  title  runs  in  part :  ''Love's 
Martyr  or  Rosaline's  Complaint,  allegorically 
shadowing  the  truth  of  love,  in  the  constant  fate  of 
The  Phoenix  and  the   Turtle",   with   other  here 


THE     LTEICAL     SHAKESPEAEF  247 

omissible  tags  of  information.  The  collection  is 
made  up  of  ** diverse  poetical  essays'',  nameless  and 
named,  one  of  which  is  the  above  poem  subscribed 
with  the  name  of  William  Shakespeare.  Such  is 
the  external  evidence  of  its  authenticity,  which  in 
general  has  been  accepted,  though  sometimes  chal- 
lenged on  grounds  more  or  less  subjective. 

Concerning  this  to  our  mind  prophetic  poem. 
The  Phoenix  and  the  Turtle,  we  may  first  jot  down 
what  to-  us  stands  out  as  its  most  peculiar  and 
stunning  characteristic:  Shakespeare  writes  here 
an  Emersonian  lyric  more  than  two  centuries  before 
the  birth  of  Emerson,  whose  turn  of  thought  and 
use  of  the  English  word  often  recall  the  Eliza- 
bethan stylists.  For  example  those  two  birds,  the 
one  fabled  and  the  other  real,  the  Phoenix  and  the 
Turtle, 

lov'd,  as  love  in  twain 

Had  the  essence  but  in  one ; 

Two  distincts,  division  none: — 

Hearts  remote,  yet  not  asunder ; 

Distance,  and  no  space  was  seen — . 

So  Shakespeare  had  his  transcendental  mood,  or 
perchance  epoch  in  Old  England  without  waiting 
for  New  England  whose  Concord  poet  sings  a  con- 
cordant strain  in  his  Brahma : 

Far  or  forgot  to  me  is  near, 

Shadow  and  sunlight  are  the  same, 

The  vanished  gods  to  me  appear. 
And  one  to  me  are  shame  and  fame. 


248  SHAKESPK  ARK'S    hlFE-DMAMA. 

They  reckon  ill  who  leave  me  out, 

When  me  they  fly,  I  am  the  wings; 
I  am  the  doubter  and  the  doubt — . 

Thus  the  dualism  of  the  whole  finite  world  vanishes 
like  the  Hindoo  Maya  into  the  absolute  One. 
Shakesj^eare  has  the  same  movement,  but  confines 
it  to  love:  he  makes  the  two  lovers  (as  birds)  lose 
their  twoness  in  the  one  essence  of  love  by  death, 
and  he  spins  in  the  process  some  of  his  finest  meta- 
physical gossamers,  hardly  visible  unless  seen  across 
the  sunlight  from  the  heights: 

Single  nature's  double  name 
Neither  two  nor  one  was  call  'd — 
Reason,  in  itself  confounded, 
Saw  division  grow  together; 
To  themselves  yet  either  neither, 
Simple  were  so  well  compounded — . 

Here  the  term  reason  seems  to  mean  the  Kantian 
understanding f  and  the  passage  calls  up  one  of  the 
deepest-searching  discussions  sprung  of  modern 
German  Philosophy,  which  may  be  stated  very 
simply  thus :  what  is  the  difference  between  Reason 
(Vernuft)  and  Understanding  (Verstand)  ?  We 
can  find  Emerson  wrestling  with  the  same  problem, 
which  i)robably  came  to  him  from  the  Germans 
through  Carlyle.  Goethe  also  had  his  repeated 
tussle  with  the  same  subtle  distinction,  in  spite  of 
his  professed  dislike  of  philosophy. 

Since  the  original  title  states  the  purport  of  the 


THE    LTBICAL    SHAKESPEARE  249 

book  as  ' ' allegorieall^'  shadowing  the  truth  of  love" 
in  the  fate  of  the  two  birds,  not  a  few  commenta- 
tors have  been  enticed  to  explain  the  seemingly 
confessed  allegory.  Grosart,  for  instance,  main- 
tains that  it  shadows  the  love  of  Queen  Elizabeth 
(celebrated  by  her  poets  as  the  virginal  Phoenix) 
for  the  Earl  of  Essex,  who  was  her  turtle-dove. 
But  such  a  theory  breaks  down  at  essential  joints. 
Shakespeare's  poem  through  all  its  gauzy  cloud- 
land  lets  us  see  distinctly  the  tragedy  of  love  in 
both  male  and  female,  which  he  had  already  set 
forth  on  the  stage  to  the  senses  in  Romeo  and 
Juliet,  who  also  like  the  two  birds  may  be  taken  as 
* ' co-supremes  and  stars  of  love."  Moreover  this 
book  bears  the  date  of  1601,  whicli  is  about  the 
time  when  Shakespeare  enters  upon  his  topmost 
Tragic  Period,  during  which  he  writes  his  great 
tragedies,  starting  probably  with  his  early  Hamlet, 
as  seen  in  its  first  Quarto.  This  deei)ly  brooded 
bird-fantasia  may  well  indicate  his  melancholy 
presentiment  of  what  is  in  store  for  him,  as  well  as 
mirror  his  pensive  reminiscence  of  the  ''pair  of 
star-crossed  lovers"  Romeo  and  Juliet,  verily  his 
youthful  tragedy  of  the  Turtle  and  the  Phoenix, 
for 

Death  is  now  the  Phoenix'  nest, 

And  the  Turtle's  loyal  breast 

To  eternity  doth  rest, 

Leaving  no  posterity. 

'Twas  not  their  infirmity, 

It  was  marred  chastity. 


250  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

Similar  far-flung  idealisms,  demanding  the 
keenest  mentality  of  the  reader,  we  find  strown 
through  the  poet's  Sonnets,  seemingly  at  random, 
for  example  in  Sonnet  105 : 

Kind  is  my  love  to-day,  to-morrow  kind, 
Still  constant  in  a  wondrous  excellence; 
Therefore  my  verse  to  constancy  confin'd, 
One  thing  expressing,  leaves  out  difference. 

Here  again  he  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  that  ' '  constant 
love"  which  is  above  all  difference  and  which,  he 
says,  is  the  theme  of  his  verse. 

Fair,  kind,  and  true,  is  all  my  argument, 
Fair,  kind,  and  true,  varying  to  other  words, 
And  in  this  change  is  my  invention  spent. 
Three  themes  in  one,  which  wondrous  scope 
affords. 

In  these  lines  the  poet  starts  to  Platonizing  as  he 
often  does  in  the  Sonnets,  which  are  shot  through 
with  Plato 's  famous  trinity :  the  True,  the  Beauti- 
ful, and  the  Good.  At  this  point  we  also  come 
upon  the  main  subject  of  the  Threnos  whose  first 
verse  wails  thus: 

Beauty,  Truth  and  Rarity, 
Here  inclos'd  in  cinders  lie. 

Such  is  Shakespeare's  tragedy  of  the  Phoenix  and 
the  Turtle,  wondrously  transcendental.  (If  the 
reader  is  jarred  by  that  third  vocable  Rarity,  as  I 
am,  let  him  substitute  for  it  Purity,  or  even  Char- 


THE    L¥BICAL     SHAKESPEABE  251 

ity,  which  may  well  stand  for  kind  or  good). 

The  Arabian  Phoenix  is  a  many-centuried  fable, 
reaching  back  to  old  Herodotus,  and  floating  down 
the  ages  in  hundreds  of  allusions  and  poems.  It 
was  a  favorite  with  Shakespeare;  he  i)robably  first 
became  acquainted  with  it  in  his  classical  school  at 
Stratford.  At  any  rate  he  employs  it  in  his  earliest 
drama,  Henry  VI,  Part  I.     (Act  IV.  sc.  7) 

But  from  their  ashes  shall  be  rear'd 

A  Phoenix  that  shall  make  all  France  afeard. 

And  in  his  last  drama,  The  Tempest  (Act  III,  sc.  3) 
he  gives  to  the  wonderful  story  a  fuller  and  fin  or 
turn: 

Now  I  will  believe 
That  there  are  unicorns ;  that  in  Arabia 
There  is  one  tree,  the  Phoenix'  throne;  one 

Phoenix 
At  this  hour  reigning  there. 

Somewhere  about  midway  between  these  his  two 
extreme  productions  may  be  timed  the  preceding 
mystical  notes  of  the  Phoenix  and  the  Turtle,  as 
if  chanting  out  of  the  poet's  heart -depths  a  back- 
look  and  a  forelook  over  his  entire  London  Pan- 
drama.  The  theme  is  the  unity  of  two  souls  in  one 
all-consuming  love,  which  has  often  been  sung  in 
very  diverse  modes,  whereof  we  may  cite  these 
two  deep-toned  throbs  from  a  German  lyrist : 

Zwei  Seelen  und  ein  Gedanke, 
Zwei  Herzen  und  ein  Schlag. 


252  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

It  is  a  noteworthy  fact  that  the  poetic  transcen- 
dentalist,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  selected  just  this 
most  transcendental  poem  of  Shakespeare  for  his  in- 
terpretation as  well  as  for  his  warm  approval.  Says 
he,  in  the  preface  to  his  Anthology  (Parnassus 
1875)  :  "It  would  appear  to  be  a  lament  on  the 
death  of  a  poet  and  of  his  poetic  mistress.  But  the 
poem  is  so  quaint,  and  charming  in  diction,  tone, 
and  allusions,  and  in  its  perfect  meter  and  har- 
mony, that  I  would  gladly  have  the  fullest  illustra- 
tion yet  attainable.  I  consider  this  piece  a  good  ex- 
ample of  the  rule  that  there  is  a  poetry  for  bards 
proper  as  well  as  a  poetry  for  the  world  of  read- 
ers." Thus  Emerson  seems  to  be  letting  out  some 
heart-words  in  regard  to  his  own  peculiar  poetry, 
and  with  stronger  emphasis  he  clinches  his  last 
])oint:  ''This  i)oem,  if  published  for  the  first  time 
and  without  a  known  author's  name,  would  find  no 
general  reception.  Only  the  poets  would  save  it." 
Moreover  Emerson  in  the  same  enthusiastic  para- 
graph proj)oses  that  there  should  be  offered  '*a 
prize  for  an  essay  on  Shakespeare 's  i)oem ' ',  dealing 
with  its  historical,  literary,  and  sj)iritual  interpre- 
tation. Possibl}^  such  an  essay  lurks  still  some- 
where in  the  unpublished  Emersonian  archives. 

Thus  our  American  Emerson,  having  originally 
set  up  his  own  Sphinx  at  the  portal  of  his  poetic 
temple  (see  his  Poems,  first  edition)  here  glorifies 
Shakespeare's  riddling  Sphinx,  modestly  couching 
in  the  heart  or  at  least  in  the  middle  of  the  latter 's 
full-flowing    dramatic    career.      One    thinks    that 


TBE    LYBICAL    SHAKESPEABE  253 

Emerson  in  his  soul's  secret  preference  must  have 
regarded  The  Phoenix  and  the  Turtle  as  the  best 
thing  in  all  Shakespeare,  though  he  does  not  say 
so.  At  any  rate  we  catch  out  of  it  a  strain  in  the 
total  Shakespearian  psychology  usually  neglected, 
indeed  usually  unintelligible,  namely,  the  poet's 
supersensuous,  idealistic,  transcendental  vein  which 
forms  such  a  world-wide  contrast  with  his  vivid 
sensuous  presentations  on  the  stage.  The  same 
conclusion  whispers  us  in  an  undertone  out  of 
Emerson's  essay  on  Shakespeare  in  his  Representa- 
tive Men,  which,  however,  contains  one  of  the 
briefly  best,  most  prophetic,  most  creative  sentences 
ever  written  on  the  bard  of  Avon:  ^  *  Shakespeare 
is  the  only  biographer  of  Shakespeare. ' ' 

III.  The  Sonnets.  Here  we  reach  decidedly 
the  poetic  culmination  of  the  lyrical  Shakespeare, 
who  is  now  seen  far  surpassing,  in  literary  power 
and  intense  self-expression,  his  epical  work,  and 
even  rivaling  his  dramatic  genius  on  certain  lines. 
More  deeply  lyrical  are  these  Sonnets  than  any 
other  phase  of  his  lyricism;  they  reveal  the  poet's 
subjectivity  in  all  its  waywardness  and  steadfast- 
ness, in  its  great  littleness  and  in  its  little  great- 
ness, mirroring  his  individuality's  microcosm  as 
well  as  his  universality's  macrocosm. 

Accordingly  the  reader  will  do  well  to  note  at 
the  start  that  the  Shakespearian  I  or  Ego  is  the 
center  from  which  radiate  all  these  little  flashes  of 
poems.  The  hero  of  this  sonneted  Odyssey  of  the 
poet's  inner  life  is  himself,   or   rather  his   Self, 


254  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DRAMA 

chanting  his  own  soul 's  wanderings,  as  he  composes 
his  London  Pan-drama,  the  greatest  book  of  World- 
Literature.  Thus  we  catch  in  the  total  sweep  of 
these  154  singing  atoms  a  subtle  heroic  tinge,  some- 
what Ulyssean,  though  the  adventures  over  these 
stormy  seas  and  sunny  islets  be  wholly  internal 
and  lyrical.  We  hear  the  poet  reproaching  himself 
for  this  one-sided  occupation  with  his  own  Ego, 
which  he  brands  as  ^'the  sin  of  self-love"  when  he 
is  at  his  spirit's  contrite  confessional,  where  we 
often  find  him  in  these  Sonnets.  Take  for  example 
number  62: 

Sin  of  self-love  possesseth  all  mine  eye. 
And  all  my  soul  and  all  my  every  part ; 
And  for  this  sin  there  is  no  remedy, 
It  is  so  grounded  inward  in  my  heart. 
Methinks  no  face  so  gracious  is  as  mine, 
No  shape  so  true,  no  truth  of  such  account. 
And  for  myself  mine  own  worth  do  define, 
As  I  all  other  in  all  worths  surmount. 

Here  is  certainly  a  huge  ground-swell  of  self -ap- 
preciation on  the  part  of  William  Shakespeare, 
quite  equal  to  the  world-embracing  enthusiasm  over 
him  in  these  days  of  ours.  This  grandiose  Ego  of 
the  poet  will  ''define  its  own  worth  for  itself", 
and  declares  itself  to  ''surmount  all  other  (poets, 
men)  in  all  worths."  Who,  after  such  an  upburst 
of  self-recognition  can  repeat  the  commonplace  un- 
truth that  Shakespeare  never  knew  his  own  great- 


THE    LYRICAL    SHAKESPEABE  255 

ness?  Still  he  fails  not  to  give  himself  the  coun- 
terstroke  of  age  in  the  same  Sonnet : 

But  when  my  glass  shows  me  myself  indeed, 
Beaten  and  chopp'd  with  tann'd  antiquity, 
Mine  own  self-love  quite  contrary  I  read; 
Self  so  self-loving  were  iniquity. 

This  is  quite  another  Self  from  that  first  one,  now 
old,  ugly,  unlovely,  which  he  beholds  in  his  glass 
outer  and  inner — his  Ego  being  by  nature  thus 
self -seeing,  indeed  doubly  self-seeing.  But  this  is 
not  the  end  of  the  subtle  psychology  of  the  present 
Sonnet,  since  a  new  person  or  at  least  a  new  per- 
sonal pronoun  enters  the  process,  namely  *'thee 
I  myself  praise  for  myself",  whereupon  follows  a 
fresh  higher  uplift.  Or,  to  cite  the  two  final  subtly 
worded  and  even  more  subtly  thoughted  lines: 

'Tis  thee  (myself)  that  for  myself  I  praise, 
Painting  my  age  with  beauty  of  thy  days. 

"Who  or  what  is  this  marvelous  thee  that  has  the 
magic  power  of  transmuting  ''my  age"  old  and 
ugly,  as  it  is,  into  "the  beauty  of  thy  days"  in  the 
poet's  song  of  praise? 

The  question  calls  up  one  of  the  central  difficul- 
ties in  the  interpretation  of  the  Sonnets.  To 
identify  the  foregoing  thee  with  some  man  or 
woman  or  thing  or  idea  has  been  the  main  business 
of  the  army  of  expositors.  Somehow  a  noun, 
proper  or  common,  has  to  be  found  for  that  pro- 
noun,  else  the   commentator  must  shut  his  shop. 


256  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Leaving  aside  such  a  pursuit  at  present,  which  is 
likely  again  to  prove  fruitless,  as  it  has  a  hundred 
times  already,  we  may  observe  in  the  preceding 
Sonnet  three  psychical  stages  of  the  poet's  inner 
experience  or  of  his  Ego:  (1)  excessive  self-sat- 
isfaction, (2)  excessive  self -dissatisfaction,  (3) 
self -restoration  through  ' '  painting  my  age  with  thy 
beauty" — evidently  his  own  poetic  act,  which  thiis 
keeps  rejuvenating  the  old  poet. 

Having  such  an  example  before  us,  we  may  next 
proceed  to  state  a  determining  characteristic  which 
runs  through  this  entire  collection  of  Sonnets. 
Under  a  variety  of  pronouns  (I,  thou,  he,  she,  it, 
and  their  derivatives)  Shakespeare  hides  the  names 
of  the  persons  addressed  or  involved ;  he  refuses  to 
betray  individuals  under  their  own  designation.  I 
believe  he  did  so  on  purpose;  he  would  compel  us 
to  look  away  from  the  particular  person  to  what  is 
generically  true.  Significantly  he  employs  no 
proper  nouns,  but  only  their  pronouns,  signs  uni- 
versal for  the  special  appellatives.  Even  his  own 
identity  he  couches  in  the  one  letter  7,  using  a  few 
times  one  little  bit  of  his  cognomen.  Will,  which, 
however,  he  shadows  darkly  with  its  ambiguous 
pun.  Evidently  he  wishes  no  personal  identifica- 
tion ;  he  writes  these  brief  musings  to  be  read  by  his 
private  friends  (like  Francis  Meres)  as  his  heart's 
confidences  about  himself,  his  vocation,  his  conflicts, 
outer  and  inner,  and  most  deeply  his  world-view, 
for  we  shall  often  find  him  here  philosophizing  in 
thought's  profoundest  vein,  and  taking  his  woe's 


THE    LTBICAL     SHAKESPEABE  257 

own  medicine:  ''Adversity's  sweet  milk,  Phi- 
losophy. " 

Hence  from  this  point  of  view  we  may  charac- 
terize these  Sonnets  as  pronominal,  emphasizing 
the  pronoun  instead  of  the  noun,  substituting  the 
general  for  the  special.  Such  is  the  one  chief  dis- 
guise or  poetic  subterfuge — the  pronoun  masks  the 
noun.  Mark  the  contrast  with  the  named  person- 
ages of  his  dramas,  perhaps  a  thousand  titles  down 
to  the  little  page,  and  sometimes  voiceless  in  a 
dumb-show.  What  bearing  has  this  fact  upon  the 
desperate  modern  attempt  to  re-name  (or  re-noun) 
the  poet's  pronouns,  calling  them  Southampton, 
Pembroke,  and  many  other  appellations  concrete 
and  abstract?  Such  seems  to  be  the  coming  ques- 
tion in  this  matter. 

One  name,  however,  will  insist  upon  rising, 
though  never  articulated  throughout  the  whole 
course  of  these  Sonnets:  Marlowe.  Often  the 
reference  to  him  is  decided,  often  barely  percept- 
ible. But  Shakespeare  never  did  or  could  throw  off 
the  influence  of  that  Promethean  genius  who  shaped 
him  at  the  formative  beginning  of  his  career.  Cne 
may  frequently  hear  the  poet  paying  unconscious 
tribute  to  his  early  master  rather  than  to  his  sup- 
posed noble  patrons.  A  woman  also  has  woven 
herself  organically  into  the  living  tissue  of  these 
poems,  the  so-called  Dark  Lady.  Her  identifica- 
tion has  not  been  fully  proved,  nor  by  any  means 
disproved;  so  she  hovers  dimly  but  daringly,  and 
will  continue  to  hover  as  the  shadowy  Mary  Fitton, 


258  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DIIAMA 

Shakespeare's  real  Cleopatra  pJaying  her  part  m 
his  inner  Life-drama. 

Another  much-discussed  problem  in  reference  to 
these  Sonnets  is  the  date  of  their  composition.  Let 
us  at  once  state  our  view :  they  are  the  poet 's  inti- 
mate diary  for  some  twenty  years  or  more — from 
his  start  with  Marlowe  (possibly  a  couple  of  them 
may  reach  back  to  Stratford)  till  their  publication 
in  1609.  Hence  beneath  all  of  Shakespeare's 
Periods  underlie  the  Sonnets,  and  even  his  Epochs 
we  can  discern  in  their  mirror  reflecting  the  stages 
of  his  whole  poetic  evolution.  To  be  sure,  in  this 
central  stream  is  mingled  much  material  more  or 
less  foreign,  which  perturbs  and  deflects  the  read- 
er's mind.  Still  the  autobiographic  undertow  is 
felt  in  it  everywhere,  and  is  to  be  brought  to  the 
surface. 

Shakespeare's  form  of  the  Sonnet  is  an  adapta- 
tion from  the  Italian,  which,  though  he  did  not 
originate  it,  he  brought  to  its  acme.  Doubtless  the 
most  prolific  tine  of  his  sonneting  was  his  Italian- 
izing Epoch  already  described.  As  far  as  known, 
Marlowe  would  not  take  to  the  Sonnet,  and  hence 
did  not  follow  Shakespeare  on  this  line.  The  small 
atomic  quatorzain  (as  it  is  technically  called)  Mar- 
lowe the  Titan  seemingly  disdained  as  too  petty 
and  too  crushed  for  the  huge  outreach  of  his  genius. 
Shakespeare  on  the  contrary  loved  it,  developed  it, 
and  caressed  it  as  the  dear  momentary  relief  of  his 
tumultuous,  ever-passioning  heart-world. 

In  the  dedication  of  the  edition  of  1609  occur 


THE     LYRICAL     SHAKESPEABE  259 

these  words ;  *  *  To  the  only  begetter  of  the  ensuing 
Sonnets,  Mr.  W.  H."  This  little  phrase  has  turnea 
out  a  huge  nest  of  riddles,  on  which  the  guessers 
are  still  busily  at  work.  Who  is  this  Mr.  W.  H.? 
These  two  simple  initials,  hande  i  down  to  posterity 
by  publisher  Thomas  Thorpe,  have  been  as  prolific 
of  conjecture  as  Shakespeare's  own  masquerade  of 
pronouns  all  through  the  mazy  dance  of  the  Son- 
nets. More  than  a  dozen  candidates  for  this  emptied 
name  W.  H.  have  been  suggested  with  much  dis- 
play of  learning  and  ingenuity,  which  up  to  date 
seems  about  the  only  result.  Then  that  oracular 
locution,  ''the  only  begetter",  is  capable  of  at  least 
three  diilferent  meanings  in  Elizabethan  English, 
each  of  which  finds  hot  upholders.  Our  not  very 
ardent  view  is  that  ''the  begetter"  here  means  not 
the  getter  merely,  nor  yet  the  outside  inspirer,  but 
the  actual  creator,  who  is  rightly  "the  only  be- 
getter ' '  of  these  poems.  And  into  this  maelstrom  of 
whirling  guesses  we  would  fling  our  own  little  sur- 
mise, already  pre-empted  by  some  Shakespearians, 
that  W.  H.  is  an  uncorrected  misprint  for  W.  S., 
namely  William  Shakespeare,  who  in  the  title  of  the 
book  is  practically  declared  to  be  its  only  true  be- 
getter. Thus  the  whole  trouble  has  been  caused  by 
the  printer  who  otherwise  has  shown  himself  very 
fallible  throughout  the  text  of  this  edition,  which 
also  seems  to  have  been  ushered  into  the  world 
quite  proof -readerless.  But  enough  of  these  in- 
finitesimal side-issues. 

That  which  for  us   remains  the   quintessential 


260  SHAKESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

fact  of  this  diary  of  Sonnet-gushes  is  that  it  images 
in  the  inner  life  of  the  poet  the  three  supreme 
Periods  of  his  evolution.  They  show  him  in  his 
younger  buoyant  years,  in  his  middle-aged  tragic 
intensity,  and  in  his  final  turn  to  a  repentant  spirit 
along  with  its  reconciliation  inner  and  outer.  All 
three  leading  stages  of  Shakespeare's  personal  de- 
velopment can  be  traced  in  these  poetically  con- 
centrated outpourings  of  his  heart  and  head.  Only 
through  intense  and  prolonged  communings  with 
these  intimate  confessions  of  himself  to  himself, 
can  we  hope  to  be  admitted  to  the  real  presence  of 
the  man.  For  these  Sonnets,  as  they  stand  num- 
bered in  print,  form  by  no  means  a  consecutive 
well-ordered  whole ;  though  we  may  detect  some 
regular  sequences,  shorter  and  longer,  as  a  mass 
they  reveal  no  general  principle  of  arrangement, 
except  the  diarial.  Moreover  it  belongs  to  such  a 
moody,  motleyed,  scattered  journal,  that  it  contains 
many  jottings  at  random. 

Still  within  and  through  all  this  heterogeneous 
medley  are  reflected  the  capital  nodes  of  the  poet's 
life,  which  are  seen  also  in  his  dramas.  Accord- 
ingly we  shall  cite  a  few  passages  from  the  Sonnets 
illustrating  the  three  already  described  Periods  of 
his  London  Pan-drama. 

I.  There  is  little  doubt  that  the  larger  portion 
of  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  were  written  during  the 
Period  which  we  have  called  his  Apprenticeship — 
on  the  whole  his  happy,  hopeful,  buoyant  years 
antedating  his  great  tragedies.     This  was  likewise 


THE    LYBICAL    SHAKESPEABE  261 

the  time  of  his  most  diversified  and  prolific  author- 
ship. Frequently  his  earlier  dramas  take  a  turn 
to  the  Sonnet  especially  during  his  Italianizing 
mood;  in  fact  Love's  Labor's  Lost  shows  a  kind  of 
contest  for  the  mastery  between  the  Drama  and  the 
Sonnet.  As  an  illustration  of  his  present  happy 
atunement  and  exalted  self-appreciation,  we  may 
dte  the  following  example   (No.  55.) 

Not  marble  nor  the  gilded  monuments 
Of  princes  shall  outlive  this  powerful  rhyme ; 
But  you  shall  shine  more  bright  in  these  contents 
Than  unswept  stone,  besmear  'd  with  sluttish  time 
When  wasteful  war  shall  statues  overturn, 
And  broils  root  out  the  work  of  masonry, 
Nor  Mars  his  sword,  nor  war's  quick  fire  shall 

burn 
The  living  record  of  your  memory. 
'Gainst  death  and  all-oblivious  enmity 
Shall  you  i)ace  forth:  your  praise  shall  still  find 

room, 
Even  in  the  eyes  of  all  posterity 

That  wear  this  world  out  to  the  ending  doom. 

• 

But  here  again  the  pronominal  problem  rises: 
Who,  what  is  this  you?  Instead  of  such  a  disguis- 
ing substitute,  let  us  have  his,  her  or  its  noun 
which  somehow  is  hidden  in  or  under  that  pro- 
noun, so  demands  the  prying  commentator.  But 
in  whatever  way  one  may  shape  the  answer,  the 
poet  has  abundantly  told  on  himself,  has  given 
clearest  utterance  to  his  faith  in  his  own  genius. 


262  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFEDBAMA 

which  after  all  may  be  just  the  entity  addressed 
here,  inspiring  ''the  living  record  of  your  mem- 
ory". At  any  rate,  there  is  one  wholly  undis- 
guised, very  positive  statement :  the  poet 's  exalted 
affirmation  of  his  own  poetic  immortality,  defying 
"death  and  all-oblivious  enmity." 

II.  Undoubtedly  during  this  buoyant  time  he 
has  his  si)asms  of  melancholy  when  he  sees  dark, 
though  he  recovers.  But  there  is  in  these  Sonnets 
a  persistently  tragic  group,  though  not  always 
clustered  together  in  successive  numbers.  To  the 
vanishing  side  of  existence  we  hear  him  give  full 
stress;  especially  does  he  celebrate  the  negative 
might  of  Time  as  the  all-devouring  deity  like  old 
Greek  Cronus: 

Ruin  hath  taught  me  thus  to  ruminate. 
That  Time  will  come  and  take  my  love  away; 
This  thought  is  as  a  death,  which  cannot  choose 
But  weep  to  have  that  which  it  fears  to  lose. 

Here  mournfully  we  are  attuned  to  a  tragic  se- 
quence of  Ruin,  Time,  Death — a  right  gloomy  set 
for  the  poet's  meditation  (No.  64.)  • 

It  has  often  been  remarked  that  one  of  these 
Sonnets  (No.  66)  is  an  emphatic  echo  of  the  Ham- 
let tragedy,  especially  of  its  central  utterance,  the 
soliloquy  on  Death.  The  opening  line  strikes  the 
tragic  tone  of  the  poet 's  Second  Period : 

Tir'd  with  all  these,  for  restful  Death  I  cry, 

whereupon  he  recounts  with  pessimistic  bitterness 


THE    LYRICAL    SHAKESPEARE  263 

the  time 's  hopeless  degeneracy,  so  that  we  can  hear 
the  poet  intoning  the  psychical  parallel : 

To  be  or  not  to  be,  that  is  the  question. 

Thus  the  present  Sonnet  offers  a  date,  if  not  exactly 
one  of  time,  at  least  one  of  spirit,  for  the  poet's 
inner  response  to  his  Tragic  Period.  Into  what 
deepest  depths  he  must  have  sunk  while  writing 
his  Tragedies,  we  are  made  to  feel  when  we  read 
the  following  (No.  71) 

No  longer  mourn  for  me  when  I  am  dead 
Than  you  shall  hear  the  sullen  surly  bell 
Give  warning  to  the  world  that  I  am  fled 
From  this  vile  world  with  vilest  worms  to  dwell. 
O,  if,  I  say,  you  look  upon  this  verse 
When  I  perhaps  compounded  am  with  clay, 
Do  not  so  much  as  my  poor  name  rehearse. 
But  let  your  love  even  with  my  life  decay. 

Such  is  now  the  note  of  the  poet's  mortality  in 
deepest  contrast  to  the  note  of  the  poet's  immor- 
tality heard  in  the  Sonnet  previously  cited  (No. 
55).  But  with  the  years,  some  seven  or  eight  of 
them  as  we  make  the  tally,  this  world-destroying 
tragic  mood  will  finally  get  relief  through  Shake- 
speare's mightiest  self-expression,  and  a  calmer 
strain  of  reconciliation  will  begin  to  be  heard  in 
certain  Sonnets,  which  change  undoubtedly  springs 
from  another  nodal  experience  of  his  life. 

III.     Accordingly  we  are  now  to  catch  a  new 
music  of  return  and  restoration  to  fresh  hope  and 


264  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

faith  in  himself,  as  well  as  to  a  revival  of  his  youth- 
ful poetic  ambition  and  of  his  lofty  self-apprecia- 
tion. He  has  been  in  eclipse;  behold  him  coming 
out  of  it  (No.  107) : 

The  mortal  moon  hath  her  eclipse  endur'd 
And  the  sad  augurs  mock  their  own  presage ; 
Incertainties  now  crown  themselves  assur'd. 
And  x>eace  proclaims  olives  of  endles  sage. 
Now,  with  the  drops  of  this  most  balmy  time 
My  love  looks  fresh,  and  death  to  me  subscribes, 
Since,  spite  of  him,  I'll  live  in  this  poor  rhyme. 
While  he  insults  o  'er  dull  and  speechless  tribes : 
And  thou  in  this  shalt  find  thy  monument. 
When  tyrants'  crests  and  tombs  of  brass  are 
spent. 

A  vast  amount  of  local  and  cotemporary  history 
has  been  crushed  into  this  Sonnet,  with  great  in- 
crease of  its  ''incertainties."  And  that  uncertain 
ever-shifting  pronoun  thou  again  appears  with  its 
marvelous  polymorphism.  Still  there  is  one  unfail- 
ing certainty  uttered  here :  it  is  the  poet 's  own  re- 
stored and  reconciled  mood  in  thought,  style,  and 
theme.  There  may  have  been  an  external  historic 
peace,  or  an  external  physical  eclipse  of  the  moon 
alluded  to  above — who  knows?  But  the  fact  of 
Shakespeare's  own  return  of  peace,  and  of  the 
passing  of  his  eclipse  is  throbbed  from  every  word. 
And  that  must  have  been  his  main  object,  namely 
his  self-expression  as  the  last  need  of  his  being. 
Moreover  let  us  mark  that  Death  no  longer  tri- 


THE     LYBICAL     SHAKESPEARE  265 

umphs  over  him,  as  in  the  foregoing  tragic  time, 
but  now  ''subscribes  (submits)  to  me",  who  am 
therefore  his  conqueror.  Such  is  the  deepest  note 
of  the  Third  Period  not  only  in  the  poet's  dramas, 
but  likewise  in  the  poet  himself,  who  utters  his 
soul's  triumphant  deliverance  in  that  pivotal  Son- 
net (No.  146)  when  he  says: 

So  shalt  thou  feed  on  Death  that  feeds  on  men, 
And  Death  once  dead,  there's  no  more  dying 
then. 

We  may  take  these  two  lines  as  the  reconciled  out- 
come and  redemptive  finale  of  the  poet's  Sonnets, 
of  his  Dramas,  and  of  his  life.  More  subtly  turned 
in  thought  and  phrase,  it  recalls  a  like-minded  but 
more  emotionalized  and  higher-pitched  passage  in 
another  more  authoritative  book :  ' '  0  Death,  where 
is  thy  sting !    0  Grave  where  is  thy  victory ! ' ' 

What  may  be  called  the  psychology  of  the  Son- 
nets remains  to  be  written.  Their  reader  is  already 
inclined  to  turn  away  from  the  fruitless  search  and 
re-search  after  the  identification  of  their  darkly 
veiled  pronouns  and  of  the  dubious  initials  (Mr. 
W.  H.) .  But  there  is  one  personality  of  whom  some 
attribute  or  mood  is  recounted  in  nearly  every 
Sonnet;  this  is  I,  Ego,  Self,  Shakespeare,  who  is 
here  at  his  confessional  telling  his  joys  and  sorrows, 
his  sins  of  omission  and  commission,  with  contri- 
tion, repentance,  and  absolution  through  his  self- 
expression.  In  his  Sonnets,  then,  we  have  his  dis- 
tinctive psychological  record  of  himself  by  himself, 


266  SHAKE SPEAItE'S    LIFE-DRAMA. 

of   course  in   concretely   poetic,   not   in   abstractly 
scientific  form. 

Finally  we  are  to  note  that  in  these  separate  bits 
of  poems  lurks  a  drama,  indeed  several  acts  or 
stages  of  a  many-tentacled  drama,  which  here  re- 
mains as  it  were  implicit,  conceived  but  not  yet 
born  into  dramatic  utterance  and  structure.  The 
poet  or  his  I  (Ego)  is  the  central  character,  round 
whom  play  his  man  and  his  woman,  his  dear  male 
friend  on  the  one  side,  and  on  the  other  his  dearer 
fascinating  conqueress  known  as  the  Dark  Lady. 
But  of  this  ever-budding  yet  never-flowering  dra- 
matic embryo  in  the  Sonnets  we  can  here  give  no 
account,  though  of  much  value  and  interest;  the 
Shakespearian  drama  as  unfolded  and  realized  in 
this  Second  Epoch  rises  now  before  us,  to  which  we 
must  next  pass. 

III. 

The  Dramatic  Shakespeare, 

As  already  recorded,  Shakespeare  has  harvested 
one  considerable  dramatic  experience,  which  we 
have  set  forth  as  his  Collaborative  Epoch,  the  time 
of  his  four  (or  possibly  six)  so-called  but  not  well- 
called  Yorkian  plays,  which  embrace  all  of  his 
Henry  VI  and  his  Richard  III.  But  now  we  again 
take  up  his  dramaturgy,  as  it  shows  itself  during 
this  Second  Epoch  when  he  expands  from  the  one 
concentrated  point  in  many  directions,  imitating, 
experimenting,  appropriating.    In  this  time  of  out- 


THE     DRAMATIC     SHAKESFEAKK  267 

reaching  aspiration,  having  traced  his  epical  and 
lyrical  strands,  we  shall  next  follow  his  dramatic 
development,  which  runs  quite  parallel  to  the  two 
mentioned  lines  throughout  the  present  Epoch. 

Now  his  dramas  as  a  whole  during  this  time  will 
show  the  same  diversified,  searchful,  imitative  char- 
acter, which  has  been  already  emj)hasized.  That  is, 
as  his  yearning  sought  an  universal  poetic  culture, 
embracing  the  three  grand  divisions  of  all  poetry, 
epical,  lyrical,  and  dramatic,  so  now  the  third  one 
of  these  divisions,  the  drama,  he  will  essay  in  its 
three  leading  transmitted  forms,  which  were  known 
to  him  as  Comedy,  History,  Tragedy.  (The  reader 
can  see  these  three  divisions  boldly  capitalized,  as 
if  from  the  mind  if  not  from  the  hand  of  the  author 
himself,  in  the  Table  of  Contents  to  the  First 
Folio;  also  they  are  mentioned  in  Hamlet). 

So  it  comes  that  into  this  Epoch  of  about  six 
years  we  intend  to  place  seven  early  Shakespearian 
dramas,  not  now  collaborated  but  independent, 
stamped  with  the  poet's  individual  genius,  yet 
bearing  decided  marks  of  the  aforetime  which  his 
evolution  has  just  passed  through.  Of  course  there 
always  has  been  and  still  is  a  question  about  the 
dates  of  these  plays  singly  taken;  into  such  a  dis- 
cussion, however,  we  shall  very  sparingly  enter. 
But  there  is  a  pretty  fair  agreement  even  among 
the  special  date-excavators  that  the  said  seven 
dramas  fall  somewhere  within  the  sexennial  Epoch 
1589-1595 — which  time-limits  are  sufficiently  exact 
for  our  present  survey. 


268  SHAKESFKAHK'H    lAFE-DEAMA 

Still  there  is  one  important  chronological  line 
which  we  shall  draw  through  these  seven  dramas, 
dividing  them  into  those  written  before  and  those 
written  after  the  poet's  Italian  experience.  Some- 
where about  the  middle  of  this  Epoch  (1592-3), 
Shakespeare  made  his  visit  to  Italy,  and  the  imme- 
diate impress  of  that  land  of  art  and  literature  can 
be  felt  and  seen  in  the  works  composed  under  its 
spell.  Already  we  have  traced  the  distinctive 
Italian  influence  in  the  epical  and  in  the  lyrical 
Shakesjjeare ;  but  now  we  are  to  mark  even  more 
decisively  in  the  dramatic  Shakespeare  the  import 
of  renascent  Italy  which  he  saw  still  in  its  realized 
glory,  though  this  was  declining  toward  sunset.  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  Italian  Renascence 
had  through  Shakespeare  a  unique  Northern  re- 
birth, which  still  helps  to  keep  it  present  and  active 
in  the  soul  of  the  ages.  He  made  it  an  integral 
part  of  himself  forever,  nestling  it  in  the  very  heart 
of  his  creative  energy,  as  we  see  even  in  his  latest 
plays. 

Accordingly  we  shall  find  the  poet  variously  test- 
ing his  powers  first  in  three  pre-Italian  dramas,  one 
comedy  (Errors),  one  tragedy  (Titus  Andronicus), 
and  one  history  (King  John).  Later  we  shall  ob- 
serve him  under  the  Italian  enchantment  producing 
still  in  this  Epoch  four  dramas — one  tragedy 
(Romeo  and  Juliet),  one  history  (Richard  II),  and 
at  least  two  comedies  (The  Two  Gentlemen  of 
Verona)  and  (Love's  Labor's  Lost).  Thus  we  note 
him  essaying  every  species  of  drama  to  discover  the 


THE     DRAMATIC    SHAKESPEARE  269 

true  orbit  of  his  genius — his  peculiar  business  dur- 
ing the  present  Epoch.  Moreover  we  catch  him 
trying  and  appropriating  the  chief  transmitted 
dramatic  norms  of  the  historic  past — old  Roman, 
renascent  Italian,  modern  English. 

It  is,  therefore,  our  task  now  to  watch  the  su- 
preme dramatic  genius  practising  and  mastering 
the  three  main  kinds  of  drama — Tragedy,  History, 
and  Comedy — of  each  of  which  he  jjroduces  a  pre- 
Italian  and  an  Italian  or  Italianized  example. 
Mark  well,  he  is  still  acquiring  and  perfecting  his 
vocation,  whose  final  goal  is  his  completely  fulfilled 
self-expression,  his  poetic  self-realisation. 

I.  Tragedies  of  the  Present  Epoch.  As  al- 
ready indicated,  we  place  under  the  foregoing  head 
the  pre-Italian  Titus  Andronicus  and  the  deeply 
Italianized  Romeo  and  Juliety  since  the  contrast 
between  them  in  regard  to  the  i)oint  we  are  empha- 
sizing, is  most  manifest  and  coercive.  The  one  is 
old  Roman  (Senecan)  in  iubject,  style,  characters 
and  cruelties,  seemingly  a  good  deal  of  a  reminder 
of  the  youth's  classical  studies  at  Stratford,  inter- 
larded as  it  is  with  Latin  quotation  and  allusion. 
But  the  second  traged}^  is  the  very  bloom  and  fra- 
grance of  modern  fresh-flowering  Italy,  which 
Shakespeare  must  have  smelt,  seen,  and  assimilated, 
so  we  think,  from  the  soil  itself.  For  there  is  a 
vast  difference  between  the  two  dramas,  not  only  in 
the  outer  environment,  but  in  the  very  soul ;  what 
is  the  cause?  A  great  new  personal  experience  of 
the  poet  we  say — namely  the  immediately  sensed 


270  SHAKESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

and  assimilated  Italy.  Then  the  first  drama  is  by 
far  a  more  remote,  external  imitation  than  the  sec- 
ond, which,  however,  with  all  its  telling  originality, 
is  still  a  derivative. 

It  should  be  added  that  both  these  plays  are 
listed  as  Tragedies  in  the  First  Folio,  the  best  and 
most  authentic  voucher  there  is  for  the  author's 
own  classification  of  the  Shakespearian  Pan-drama. 
And  the  following  fact  also  would  seem  to  have  its 
meaning :  in  that  same  First  Folio  both  are  placed 
together,  side  by  side;  that  is,  IHtus  Andronicus 
stands  just  before  Romeo  and  Juliet,  as  if  the  twain 
might  have  been  coupled  together  in  the  poet's 
mind  when  he  looked  back  upon  his  work  from  his 
retreat  at  Stratford.  Perhaps  only  an  accident; 
still  an  accident  sometimes  has  its  pointer.  At  any 
rate  we  intend  to  follow  the  First  Folio  in  putting 
the  two  together  in  their  likeness  and  unlikeness, 
as  deeply  illustrative  of  Shakespeare's  growth  dur- 
ing this  Epoch. 

TITUS  ANDRONICUS. 

'*0,  horrible,  0  horrible,  most  horrible!"  Such 
is  the  shivering  shriek  sent  up  at  the  m.ention  of 
this  play  from  nearly  the  entire  host  of  English 
commentators,  echoed  of  course  by  our  American 
parrots,  till  the  scream  of  horror  belts  the  globe 
along  with  the  name  of  William  Shakespeare  him- 
self. In  subserviency  to  this  fearsome  far-flung 
vociferation,  the  present  drama  has  been  very  gen- 


TITUS     ANDBONICIJS  271 

erally  dammed  as  not  of  Shakespeare  at  all,  some- 
times with  a  good  deal  of  esthetic  unction.  Cries 
Henry  Hallam,  the  mueh-lauded  judicially  minded 
critic  and  historian,  res  ipsa  vociferatur  against 
the  authenticity  of  this  work.  But  we  have  to  think 
that  Hallam  himself  is  the  real  vociferator  along 
with  his  horrified  horde  of  fellow-shriekers,  start- 
ing very  faintly  from  old  Ravenscrof t 's  dubious 
whisperings  more  than  two  centuries  ago,  but  long 
after  the  poet 's  demise. 

And  now  let  it  be  fully  acknowledged  and  em- 
l)hasized  that  Titus  Andronicus  reeks  with  horribil- 
ities  curiously  diversified,  but  never  lacking  in 
carnage  and  nerve-testing  barbarities.  Meanwhile, 
however,  we  should  not  forget  that  King  Lear  in- 
dulges in  the  same  sort  of  horrific  variety  of  death, 
and  that  Hamlet  all  through  from  the  very  start  to 
the  last  line  is  seasoned  with  an  abounding  condi- 
ment of  poisonings  and  of  blood-lettings,  but  on 
account  of  this  nobody  has  yet  proi)osed  to  'elim- 
inate the  melancholy  Dane's  life-drama  from  the 
poet's  canon.  Accordingly  murder  must  be  ac- 
cepted as  a  genuine  Shakespearian  asset — murder 
bloody,  cruel,  of  many  ingenious  variations.  And 
to-day  we  are  not  lacking  in  a  like  but  grander  ex- 
ample. Death,  even  violent  death,  we  have  been 
compelled  to  witness  as  spectators,  perhaps  unwill- 
ing, with  the  whole  earth  as  the  stage,  during  the 
recent  war  (1914-8).  Far  world-wider,  more  san- 
guinary and  tiger-hearted  has  been  this  butchery 
than  that  of  petty  Titus  Andronicus,  which  thus  we 


272  SHAKESPEAKE'S    JAFE-DRAMA 

may  deem  to  have  just  now  received  a  fresh  con- 
firmation and  commentary  written  by  old  Time 
himself.  Accordingly  we  have  above  cited,  as  good 
Shakespearian  authority  for  this  play 's  horrors,  the 
grewsome  exclamation  of  the  murdered  Hamlet's 
ghost  to  his  son: 

0,  horrible,  0  horrible,  most  horrible! 
Murder  most  foul  as  in  the  best  it  is, 
But  this  most  foul,  strange,  and  unnatural. 

The  first  point  which  should  be  now  seized  upon 
by  the  deeper  and  stronger-nerved  student  is  just 
that  old  World- War  which  lies  everywhere  in  the 
background  of  Titus  Andronicus — the  conflict  be- 
tween the  barbarians  of  the  North,  here  represented 
by  the  Goths,  and  the  Roman  Empire  with  its  civ- 
ilized institutions,  manners,  and  laws.  Such  is  the 
contrast  often  marked  in  respect  of  the  two  collid- 
ing elements  of  the  play,  as  we  may  catch  in  the 
line :  ' '  Thou  art  a  Roman,  be  not  barbarous. ' ' 
Then  the  Queen  of  the  Groths  is  thus  labeled: 
''Barbarous  Tamora,  for  no  name  fits  thy  nature 
but  thine  own."  Thus  the  dramatic  action  is 
placed  right  in  the  cataclysm  of  ancient  civiliza- 
tion, when  the  latter  was  being  broken  up  by  Teu- 
tonic barbarism.  The  young  poet  has  seized  and 
portrayed  this  theme  as  his  own  time's  and  his 
own  self's — Elizabeth's  England  was  rocked  with 
the  throes  of  some  such  convulsion,  as  well  as 
Shakespeare  in  person. 

The  victorious  Roman  general  Titus  Andronicus 


TITVS    ANDEONICUS  273 

has  been  called  by  the  Senate  ''from  weary  wars 
against  the  barbarous  Goths",  of  whom  the  Queen 
Tamora  with  her  three  sons  appears  on  the  scene, 
all  being  captives  of  Rome.  The  eldest  of  these 
royal  Gothic  sons  is  seized  and  savagely  immolated 
''to  appease  their  groaning  shadows  that  are  gone'', 
which  shadow",  are  those  of  the  twenty-one  war- 
slain  Roman  sons  of  Andronicus,  who  still  has  four 
others  living  and  here  present  along  with  one 
daughter  Lavinia.  Such  is  the  play's  opening  deed 
of  blood,  which  the  Gothic  Queen  and  her  sons  in 
their  turn  proceed  to  avenge  by  slaying  the  brother 
and  two  of  the  remaining  sons  of  Titus,  and  by  hor- 
ribly mutilating  and  ravishing  the  daughter.  This 
calls  up  in  requital  the  drama's  third  grand  ven- 
geance, that  of  Titus,  who  seeks  to  equal  the  pre- 
ceding horror  by  cutting  the  throats  of  the  two 
remaining  sons  of  the  Gothic  Queen,  and  serving 
up  their  cooked  heads  as  a  Thyestean  banquet  to 
their  mother.  The  furious  nemesis  of  the  play  is 
let  loose  for  the  fourth  time,  and  sweeps  off  the 
stage  the  Gothic  Queen  Tamora  herself,  the  Roman 
general  Titus  Andronicus  himself,  along  with  the 
Emperor  Saturninus  in .  hideous  rapid  butchery, 
while  the  infernal  Moorish  villain,  Aaron,  the  black 
devil  of  the  action,  is  buried  alive.  Such  is  the 
feast  of  horrors,  not  all  of  them,  but  the  main 
dishes. 

Is  our  poet  the  author  of  it — wholly,  partially, 
or  not  at  all  ?  Many  shades  of  opinion  we  shall  find 
if  we  range  the  commentators.    It  is  an  early,  if  not 


274  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

his  earliest  work,  we  hold;  but  a  genuine,  nay  an 
indispensable  part  of  his  total  Life-drama.  We  see 
here  the  boy,  natural  lover  of  things  horrible ;  does 
he  not  to-day  delight  in  stories  of  murder  and 
bloody  adventure — Bluebeard,  Rinaldo  Rinaldini, 
Jesse  James,  the  Missouri  brigands?  And  the 
newspaper — has  it  not  its  daily  grist  of  assassina- 
tion, rapine,  pistolades  of  all  sizes,  often  tricked 
out  in  lengthy  lurid  imagery  ?  Young  Shakespeare, 
like  you,  had  also  his  sensational  day,  and  he,  the 
born  creator,  threw  it  out  of  himself  into  his  native 
art-form,  the  dramatic.  Whereof  we  have  here  his 
chief,  but  not  his  only  specimen.  A  link  in  the 
chain  of  his  spirit's  evolution  we  would  lose  if  we 
left  out  his  Titus  Andronicus. 

Of  course  it  is  not  possible  to  give  the  exact  date 
of  this  play;  it  competes  for  the  place  of  being 
Shakespeare's  very  first  independent  production  at 
least  with  two  if  not  three  other  dramas.  Comedy 
of  Errors,  and  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  and  even 
Richard  III.  It  is  easily  conceivable  that  all  of 
them  may  have  been  carried  on  for  a  time  together ; 
an  author  usually  puts  to  mental  soak  several  co- 
temporaneous  sketches  of  planned  works,  elaborat- 
ing and  finishing  them  according  to  inner  mood  and 
outer  call  or  opportunity.  Ben  Jonson  who  knew 
Shakespeare  well  and  his  dramatic  history,  in  a 
passage  belonging  to  1614,  dates  Titus  Andronicus 
back  some  ''twenty-five  or  thirty  years",  which 
statement  times  the  play's  origin  somewhere  in  our 
poet's  era  of  drifting  (1584-5  to  1588-9).    Another 


TITUS    ANDBONICUS  275 

hint  of  its  date  we  may  hear  in  its  evident  allusion 
to  Marlowe's  Tamhurlane,  staged  in  1587-8,  whose 
hero  is  the  great  barbaric  Scythian  conqueror  of 
the  Orient,  when  a  Goth,  himself  a  barbarian,  ex- 
claims :  ' '  Was  ever  Scythia  half  so  barbarous ' '  as 
this  civilized  Rome?  (I,  1,  131).  Whereupon  the 
Gothic  reply  follows:  ''Oppose  (compare)  not 
.Scythia  to  ambitious  Rome ' ',  for  the  latter  employs 
really  the  more  savagery. 

In  fact  there  is  a  distinct  kinship  between  Mar- 
lowe's Tamhurlane  and  Shak'-speare's  Titus  An- 
dronicus  in  theme,  in  style,  in  ruthlessness.  Both 
poets  were  born  in  the  same  year,  though  Marlowe 
shot  ahead  of  Shakespeare  in  the  rapid  maturity  of 
his  genius,  and  hence  became  the  teacher  and  early 
master.  Both  were  appreciative  friends  and  co- 
workers, and  both  partook  of  the  time's  furious 
protest  against  tradition,  as  well  as  of  its  grand 
literary  upburst,  especially  in  the  drama.  Their 
two  mentioned  plays  have  fundamentally  the  same 
subject;  the  conflict  between  Barbarism  and  Civil- 
isation, though  the  one  dramatist  takes  the  Orient 
for  his  scene  and  the  other  prefers  Rome.  On  the 
whole,  Marlowe  makes  the  Barbarians  conquer, 
while  Shakespeare  through  all  his  bloodshed  pre- 
serves the  Roman  State  and  with  it  the  movement 
of  the  World's  History  by  crowning  a  new  em- 
peror at  the  murderous  finale.  Still  in  both  we  may 
feel  the  youthful  revolt  against  the  existing  trans- 
mitted order;  through  both  runs  an  undertone  of 
challenge  to  the  accepted  civilized  society. 


276  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Another  characteristic  of  the  present  play  is  its 
pervading  atmosphere  of  reminiscence,  which  re- 
calls the  school-boy  Shakespeare  at  Stratford  in  his 
classical  studies.  Crumbs  of  Latin  a.T  well  as  Latin- 
isms  often  drop  here  from  his  ready  tongue;  he  is 
overflowing  with  incidents  and  tales  from  the 
Roman  poets,  Virgil,  Horace,  especially  Ovid,  and 
most  especially  from  the  latter 's  Metamorphoses, 
already  designated  as  a  kind  of  literary  bible  for 
the  youth  as  well  as  for  the  time's  Renascence. 
Indeed  we  seem  to  be  able  to  pick  out  of  that  mani- 
fold story-book  the  very  tale  which  wrought  the 
strongest  fascination  upon  the  boy  William  Shake- 
speare: it  is  the  revolting  legend  of  Philomela 
whose  tongue  was  cut  out  to  prevent  her  telling  her 
wrongs  after  being  ravished  by  King  Pandion  of 
Thebes.  This  monstrous  myth  drives  through  the 
entire  action  of  Titus  Andronicus,  and  constitutes 
one  of  its  leading  motives,  mirroring  the  fate  of 
Lavinia,  daughter  of  Titus,  and  portraying  the  top- 
most horribility  of  the  whole  horrible  drama.  Some 
half  a  dozen  recurrences  of  it  therein  I  have 
counted,  and  I  am  led  to  think  that  it  was  just  this 
tale  working  in  the  imagination  of  the  young  dra- 
matist, which  gathered  round  itself  as  the  original 
germ  the  other  uncanny  materials  of  this  work, 
most  of  them  seemingly  fabricated  by  the  boy  him- 
self from  his  readings  in  Roman  poetry  and  his- 
tory. For  here  he  appears  to  dramatize  in  his  own 
way  all  the  Latin  of  his  Stratford  schooling.  And 
the  stranger  fact  is  that  this  tale  of  terror  never 


TITUS    ANDBONICUS  277 

quit  him  in  all  his  life,  but  haunted  still  his  aged 
genius:  whereof  we  may  cull  an  example  "from 
Cymheline  (II.  2.  46),  one  of  his  latest  creations: 

.    .    .    She  (Imogen)  hath  been  reading  late 
The  tale  of  Tereus:  here  the  leaf's  turned  down 
Where  Philomel  gave  up — 

perchance  in  the  poet's  own  copy  of  the  Metamor- 
phoses, and  the  very  book  which  his  mother  once 
presented  him  (we  dare  again  imagine),  inasmuch 
as  a  boy  here  in  the  drama  (IV.  1.  42),  young 
Lucius,  asserts  with  heartfelt  reminiscence 

*Tis  Ovid's  Metamorphoses, 
My  mother  gave  it  me — 

So  we  may  recall  the  one  tenderest  domestic  islet 
in  this  ocean  of  blood. 

What  a  weird  uncanny  fascination  such  a  des- 
perate myth  seemed  to  wield  over  the  young  and 
the  old  Shakespeare !  How  may  we  account  for  it  ? 
Did  he  think,  as  he  sat  in  the  nearby  Arden  wood 
of  an  evening,  to  hear  in  the  sad  notes  of  the 
nightingale,  who  was  the  transformed  Philomela, 
the  inarticulate  voice  of  his  own  tragic  soul  long- 
ing for  musical  utterance,  and  preluding  the  strain 
of  his  deepest  genius  hereafter  to  be  unfolded  into 
his  full-worded  greatness?  We  may  be  able  to 
hearken  the  young  poet  communing  with  his  Muse 
under  the  guise  of  his  favorite  song-bird  (Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona  V.  4.4.)  : 


278  SBAKESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

Here  can  I  sit  alone,  unseen  of  any, 
And  to  the  nightingale 's  complaining  notes 
Tune  my  distresses  and  record  my  woes. 
0  thou  that  dost  inhabit  in  my  breast. 
Leave  not  the  mansion  so  long  tenantless — 

Such  experiences  he  could  have  had  only  in  his 
country-home  at  Stratford,  where  he  as  school-boy 
read  the  tale  of  Philomel,  and  listened  to  the  song 
of  the  nightingale,  forefeeling  his  own  deeper  call. 
Moreover  he  strews  through  this  play  incidents  of 
the  whole  history  of  Rome,  republican,  imperial, 
medieval.  For  instance  he  introduces  the  Repub- 
lic's great  struggle  between  plebeians  and  patri- 
cians, as  well  as  custome  and  works  belonging  to 
papal  Rome.  Full  of  anachronisms  runs  the 
stream,  and  we  say  let  them  run.  Still  the  action 
hovers  about  one  great  historic  event:  the  conflict 
of  the  Roman  Empire  with  the  outlying  Bar- 
barians. But  the  special  history  of  Titus  Androni- 
cus,  as  here  employed,  has  never  been  discovered, 
it  is  declared,  though  several  plays  of  this  name 
were  known  to  Shakespeare's  time  and  became  ex- 
ceedingly popular.  Of  the  present  play  a  number 
of  quartos  were  printed  during  the  poet's  life, 
showing  that  it  had  also  its  voracious  reading- 
public  butressed  with  strong  nerves. 

So  we  assign  this  play  in  full  to  Shakespeare  as 
revealing  a  rudimentary  but  very  necessary  stage 
of  the  poet 's  evolution.  Without  it  there  would  be 
a    gap    in    his    self's    all-rounded    utterance    and 


TITVS    ANDBONICUS  279 

achievement.  To  be  sure,  it  is  not  a  pleasant  play ; 
if  the  reader  is  seeking  amusement  merely,  he  can 
find  it  less  shocking  elsewhere.  But  if  he  wishes  to 
trace  the  entire  development  of  the  unique  Life- 
drama  of  Shakespeare,  even  the  disgustingly  em- 
bryonic part,  he  will  make  a  microscopic  examina- 
tion of  Titus  Andronicus,  He  will  find  everywhere 
in  it  mementos  of  the  Stratford  school-boy  satu- 
rated with  his  classicism.  The  daring  young  genius 
is  at  work,  defiantly  heaping  together  all  sorts  of 
dramatic  horrors,  out-Kyding  the  redoubtable 
Thomas  Kyd  in  making  humanity  hideous.  Thus 
the  play  shows  the  protoplasmic  dramaturgy  of 
the  nascent  genius  testing  in  writ  devildom  it- 
self. 

We  believe  that  the  researchful  reader  will  feel 
a  bent  to  compare  this  lowest  play  with  highest 
Hamlet,  which  also  registers  on  its  list  of  blood 
some  eight  murders,  and  is  not  without  its  full 
tally  of  horrors.  But  marvelous  is  the  difference 
between  the  two  tragedies,  and  hence  we  grapple 
after  the  poet 's  hidden  thread  of  development  from 
one  to  the  other,  running  through  ten  or  a  dozen 
years.  So  savagely  alike  yet  so  humanly  different ! 
Let  the  problem  be  deferred  for  the  present;  one 
little  point  however  we  may  score  here:  Hamlet 
portrays  an  unearthly  revenge,  yet  at  the  same  time 
the  deepest  reaction  of  the  spirit  against  it ;  while 
Titus  Andronicus  is  pure  nemesis  quite  without  any 
backstroke  of  compunction.  The  hideous  devil  of 
the  play  Aaron,  black  outside  and  blacker  inside. 


280  SHAEE8PE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

makes  the  sole  scoffing  allusion  to  the  soul's  inner 
remedial  power: 

And  hast  a  thing  within  thee  called  conscience — 

which  thing  or  rather  deity  is  enthroned  in  Ham- 
let, and  rules  the  argument  from  start  to  finish. 

This  youthful  play,  accordingly,  has  in  it  a  good 
deal  of  prophecy  forecasting  the  matured  Shake- 
speare. As  a  tragedy  we  may  take  it  to  prelude 
the  poet's  tragic  or  second  Period;  it  shoots  many 
germs  which  we  can  trace  fructifying  in  his  later 
greatest  works.  It,  moreover,  has  a  marked  affinity 
with  Henry  VI,  already  considered;  each  repre- 
sents a  world-chaos,  the  one  being  old  Roman,  the 
other  medieval  English,  in  which  chaotic  social 
upheavals  the  young  genius  of  Titanic  aspiration 
usually  lets  go  his  first  creative  delight;  for  he 
revolts  against  all  tradition,  and  proposes,  as  the 
new-born  demiurge,  to  make  God's  defective  uni- 
verse more  perfect  than  ever.  Finally  to-day  no- 
body can  forget  that  here  is  one  phase  of  that 
twenty-centuried  conflict  between  Teutonia  and 
Roma,  still  seething  and  unsettled;  in  this  plaj^ 
specially  it  is  designated  as  the  war  between  the 
Goths  and  the  Romans,  or  between  Barbarism  and 
Civilisation. 

Hence  it  results  that  this  bloodiest  work  of  Titus 
Androniciis  became  a  popular  theme  all  over  North- 
ern Europe;  we  read  of  old  German  and  Dutch 
plays  on  the  present  subject  along  with  several 
English   ones  besides  that  of   Shakespeare.      The 


BOMEO     AND    JULIET  281 

Teutonic  folk  of  the  North  must  have  felt  some 
very  profound  racial  instinct  fermenting  in  these 
dramas,  betokening  the  eternal  struggle  between 
the  Germanic  and  the  Latin  or  Mediterranean 
worlds.  Let  it  be  again  stated  that  this  most  fu- 
rious and  deepest-seated  dualism  of  Europe  finds 
its  highest  poetic  presentment  and  reconciliation 
in  Shakespeare,  originating  in  his  case  especially 
through  his  trip  to  Italy. 

ROMEO  AND  JULIET. 

So  we  pass,  for  the  sake  of  revealing  a  chief 
node  in  the  growth  of  Shakespeare,  to  what  we  may 
call  the  most  thoroughly  Italian  or  rather  Italian- 
ized work  of  the  poet,  very  successful  and. eternal. 
There  is  no  telling  how  many  years  have  run  since 
the  composition  of  the  former  Romanized  play  of 
Titus  Andronicus,  but  we  can  observe  a  marked 
cultural  change  and  transformation  in  the  author. 
Both  dramas,  however,  belong  to  the  same  epoch, 
the  imitative,  outreaching,  experimental.  Equally 
deep-motived  is  the  transfer  of  the  basic  passion 
from  bloody  nemesis  to  tragic  love. 

The  transition  of  the  poet  from  England  to  Italj^ 
may  be  repeatedly  discerned  in  the  play.  First 
let  it  be  noted  that  the  great  majority  of  the  com- 
mentators predicate  at  least  two  redactions  of  the 
work,  though  the  real  significance  of  each  they 
seem  not  distinctly  to  conceive.  As  we  look  at  the 
matter,   the   earlier   play   or   perhaps   sketch   was 


282  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

English  or  rather  pre-Italian;  the  nurse  who  is  an 
old  English  granny  times  her  jjart  as  taking  place 
in  1591,  of  which  date  she  prattles: 

'Tis  since  the  earthquake  now  eleven  years, 
And  she  was  weaned — I  never  shall  forget  it. 

Said  earthquake  was  also  English,  hardly  Italian, 
being  chronicled  in  England  under  the  year  1580. 
The  nurse,  though  otherwise  not  pedantically  exact 
in  her  chronology,  is  very  emphatic  here,  so  that 
we  can  say  this  speech  of  hers  belongs  to  the  first 
couple  of  years  before  Shakespeare's  trip  to  Italy. 
On  the  other  hand  certain  historic  allusions  in  the 
drama  seem  to  suggest  events  which  occurred  two 
or  three  years  after  the  poet's  return  from  the 
South.  Such  indications  are  indeed  faint  and 
vague,  still  they  hint  what  the  actual  text  of  the 
work  plainly  shows:  a  pre-Italian  and  a  post- 
Italian  element  running  through  the  whole  action, 
a  lower  comic  and  a  higher  tragic  set  of  characters, 
a  Northern  and  Southern  strain  in  speech,  man- 
ners, personages,  yea  in  the  very  soul  of  the  poetic 
organism. 

The  first  outer  fact  of  this  play,  falling  at  once 
into  the  eye,  hints  already  its  deeper  purport :  the 
title  is  sexed,  the  man  and  woman  are  conjoined 
equally  by  name  in  the  tragic  action,  Romeo  and 
Juliet  are  here  married  forever  by  Shakespeare, 
and  not  till  death  shall  separate  them  and  bury 
them  in  oblivion.  For  before  us  they  live  and  love 
to-day,  indissoluble  in  their  hot  wedlock  till  per- 


BOMEO     AND    JULIET  283 

chance  the  planet  itself  may  grow  cold.  The  love- 
cult  rising  from  this  poem  must  have  started  soon 
after  its  first  production,  and  it  has  been  kept  up 
ever  since  with  a  countless  increase  of  communi- 
cants. Whereof  an  early  indication  may  be  found 
in  Marston,  a  poet  cotemporary  with  Shakespeare, 
who  versifies  his  little  laugh  at  stage-stricken  love- 
lorn Luscus,  the  youth  yearning  for  his  heart's 
passionate  expression  through  this  drama: 

Luscus,  what's  played  to-day? — Faith,  now  I 

know, 
I  see  thy  lips  abroach,  from  whence  doth  flow 
Naught  but  pure  Juliet  and  Romeo. 

Here  it  is  in  place  to  note  that  these  sexed  titles 
are  employed  by  Shakespeare  in  two  other  plays, 
both  tragedies  as  labeled  in  the  First  Folio — 
Troilus  and  Cressida,  to  which  must  be  superla- 
tively added  Antony  and  Cleopatra.  These  are 
three  works  which  reach  through  nearly  his  entire 
dramatic  career,  from  almost  its  beginning  till  to- 
ward its  close.  Hence  the  question  rises:  why 
select  just  these  three  dramas  out  of  the  entire 
thirty-six  (not  thirty-seven)  in  which  is  stressed 
the  sexual  fact  by  elevating  the  woman  alongside 
the  man  to  mark  the  name  of  the  work?  In  no 
other  plays  does  our  poet  assign  to  the  female  a 
titular  place  alongside  the  male,  or  even  alone,  ac- 
cording to  the  baptismal  register  of  the  First  Folio, 
which  doubtless  shows  the  poet  choosing  his  own 
titles  for  his  own  productions.     At  least  we  may 


284  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

here  premise  that  these  three  plays,  so  far  apart  in 
time  of  composition,  but  double-gendered  in  their 
very  faces,  are  not  so  labeled  by  mere  accident,  but 
are  kinned  in  some  inner  strain  and  outer  structure 
common  to  them  all,  and  mirrored  in  the  personal 
evolution  of  the  poet  himself. 

Still  the  woman  in  many,  yea  in  most  of  Shake- 
speare's works,  especially  the  Comedies,  is  the 
stronger  and  higher  character,  the  dominant  per- 
sonality, often  carrying  the  deepest,  indeed  the 
mediatorial  role  of  the  dramatic  conflict.  Such  is 
the  honor  with  which  our  poet  crowns  her  in  all  his 
latest  dramas.  But  she  never  gets  credit  for  her 
Shakespearian  worth  in  the  Shakespearian  title, 
never  is  nominated  in  the  inscription 's  blazon.  For 
instance,  the  Merchant  of  Venice  surely  ought  to  be 
called  Portia.  Just  why  may  this  not  be?  I  have 
on  occasion  thought  that  it  resulted  from  the  fact 
that  in  Shakespeare's  time  his  female  roles  were 
taken  by  a  man,  or  oftener  by  a  boy.  But  just 
imagine  that  stage  when  a  piping  adolescent  with 
his  voice  cracking  to  discordant  pieces  all  the  way 
down  between  tenor  and  basso,  had  to  speak  the 
perfervid  part  of  Juliet  in  the  balcony  love-scene 
or  in  the  supulchre's  death-scene.  Let  us  not  get 
addicted  to  the  glorification  of  such  a  theatre, 
though  it  be  Shakespeare's  own  Globe.  Too  much 
inclined  we  are  to-day  in  our  antiquarian  craze  to 
seek  for  Shakespeare  himself  in  the  petty  details 
of  Shakespeare's  very  imperfect  stage.  Let  them 
not  be  neglected,  but  at  the  same  time  let  it  be  duly 


BOMEO    AND    JULIET  285 

recognized  that  he  is  infinitely  greater  than  his 
little  scenic  pinfold.  The  poet  himself  doubtless 
felt  the  inadequacy  of  such  a  presentation  of  his 
great  woman,  and  we  may  hear  his  disgust  (Antony 
and  Cleopatra  V.  2.  216)  in  what  Cleopatra  says 
as  she  thinks  of  herself  when  acted  by  a  boy : 

The  quick  comedians 
Extemporally  will  stage  us — and  I  shall  see 
Some  squeaking  Cleopatra  boy  my  greatness — 

which  tells  a  fact  taken  directly  from  the  actor  *s 
own  experience. 

The  very  date  has  been  handed  down,  December 
8, 1660,  half  a  century  after  Shakespeare's  activity, 
when  the  part  of  Desdemona  was  first  played  by  a 
woman — then  an  awful  innovation  even  for  the 
English  theatre.  Still  in  spite  of  such  an  external 
handicap,  the  poet's  female  characters  are  of  his 
all-best — doubtless  better  on  the  whole  than  his 
male.  For  Shakespeare  has  portrayed  no  Greatest 
Man — not  a  Christ,  nor  a  Socrates,  and  his  Caesar 
is  not  the  mightiest  Julius  alive  and  doing  his  sov- 
ereign deed.  Strange  as  it  may  seem,  through 
that  squeaking  boy  our  poet  has  voiced  and 
eternized  some  of  the  greatest  and  most  command- 
ing woman-souls  of  all  time.  But  in  order  to  per- 
form such  a  feat,  his  genius  in  the  supreme  act  of 
creation  had  to  fling  off  the  fetters  of  that  cramp- 
ing Elizabethan  stage-prison.  We  shiver  to  think 
of  Cordelia  modulating  her  boyish  squeak  on  the 
boards : 


286  SHAKESPEARE'S   LIFE  DRAMA 

Her  voice  was  ever  soft 
Gentle  and  low — an  excellent  thing  in  woman. 

Thus  we  judge  that  the  sexed  caption  heard  in 
the  coupled  names  of  this  play,  Romeo  and  Juliet, 
has  its  significance  in  the  poet's  total  worK,  espe- 
cially when  taken  in  connection  with  the  two  other 
mentioned  tragedies  which  are  similarly  titled. 
But  this  is  not  all.  In  his  epopee  of  amorous  pas- 
sion called  Venus  and  Adonis  is  found  another 
sexed  designation,  now  legendary,  of  a  goddess  and 
a  mortal  youth.  Also  in  his  sonnets  are  paired  the 
poet  himself  and  his  elusive  Dark  Lady.  Notable 
is  the  fact  that  in  all  these  cases — Juliet,  Cressida, 
Cleopatra,  Mary  Fitton — the  woman  is  the  dom- 
inant, the  compelling  personality.  Such  must  have 
been,  in  general  the  deepest  Shakespearian  convic- 
tion and  underlying  consciousness,  brought  to  ac- 
tivity and  enforced  by  some  all-overmastering  in- 
dividual experience.  Here  then  we  should  recall  the 
place  of  his  sovereign  mother  in  his  early  Stratford 
days.  Can  we  forget  in  such  a  connection  the  mar- 
riage of  the  boy  William  Shakespeare  with  the 
much  older  Anne  Hathaway?  And  his  youthful 
flight  from  home?  For  that  decisive  experience 
may  be  detected  working  through  his  entire  Pan- 
drama,  inasmuch  as  we  can  feel  a  strong  and  very 
characteristic  pulsation  of  it  throbbing  up  full- 
hearted  in  his  latest  work,  the  Tempest  ( See  IV.  1, 
15-22).  So  we  may  add  to  the  foregoing  sexed 
pairs  of  his  writ,  the  original  unwritten  but  the 
real  ones,  bonded  at  Stratford  on  the  Avon,  founda- 


BOMEO    AND    JULIET  287 

tion  and  first  germinal  reality  of  all  these  ideally 
visioned  couples  of  his  genius. 

This  play  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  has  its  very  de- 
cided presuppositions,  which  must  not  be  forgotten, 
though  it  be  one  of  the  poet 's  most  original  produc- 
tions. Here  we  catch  him  again  seizing  his  mate- 
rials wherever  he  may  find  them  congenial  to  his 
Muse — the  crude,  unsmelted,  and  uncoined  ore  of 
his  unversified  gold,  which  he  then  proceeds  t« 
mint  into  his  poetical  treasure.  His  prime  quarry 
in  the  present  case  was  a  poem  published  before  his 
birth  (1562)  by  Arthur  Brooke  called  Romeus  and 
Juliet,  which  was  written  in  rhymed  Alexandrines, 
and  furnished  to  the  dramatist  a  quite  complete 
outline  of  his  story  and  of  his  characters  with  their 
names.  Often  too  it  motives  the  tendency  to 
rhyme  in  the  poet's  drama,  striking,  as  it  were, 
the  varied  lyrical  key-note  of  kissing  words.  An- 
other early  English  version  in  prose  (1567)  the 
young  Shakespeare  could  have  eagerly  devoured  in 
Palace  of  Pleasure.  But  the  tale  itself  came  to 
England  from  Italy,  where  it  seems  to  have  been 
universally  diffused  by  the  Italian  romancers,  es- 
pecially by  the  popular  Bandello,  whom  Shake- 
speare is  often  supposed  to  have  read  in  the  orig- 
inal. Under  many  forms — novel,  ballad,  drama— 
the  story  became  current  throughout  the  whole 
Mediterranean  world,  in  Spain,  France  as  well  as 
Italy ;  indeed  it  seems  to  have  first  burgeoned  back 
in  Greece,  the  germinal  originator,  as  usual.  This 
long  record  of  popular  evolution  has  its  fascination, 


288  JSRAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

but  must  here  be  omitted.  Only  one  fact  and  one 
writer  would  we  fish  out  of  this  vast  mass  of  pro- 
toplasmic love-lore:  Luigi  da  Porto  about  1530  is 
declared  to  have  been  the  first  to  join  the  two  lovers 
Romeo  and  Juliet  together  by  their  lasting  Shake- 
spearian names,  and  also  to  have  made  them  the 
children  of  two  antagonistic  Veronese  families — 
an  ever-memorable  thought-stroke  of  the  obscure 
little  Italian  story-teller,  and  destined  to  embalm 
for  long  his  rather  dead  name.  Still  when  all  is 
told,  the  chief  credit  of  furnishing  to  our  poet  the 
whole  storied  skeleton  of  his  drama,  as  well  as  hints 
for  his  English  realistic  characters,  such  as  the 
Apothecary  and  the  Nurse  (though  I  believe  that 
Shakespeare  saw  them  both  at  Stratford  and  fresh- 
ened their  features),  belongs  to  the  fore-mentioned 
Arthur  Brooke. 

There  is  both  external  and  internal  evidence  that 
the  poet  reveals  a  considerable  evolution  of  himself 
during  several  years  in  this  drama.  The  final  stage 
of  it  is  historically  indicated  in  the  title-page  of 
the  completed  Quarto  numbered  the  second,  and 
dated  1599,  which,  somewhat  abbreviated,  runs 
thus :  '*The  most  excellent  and  lamentable  Tragedy 
of  Romeo  and  Juliet.  As  it  has  been  sundry  times 
publicly  acted.  Newly  corrected,  augmented  and 
amended — London."  Here  the  striking  point  is 
the  statement  concerning  the  fresh  elaboration  and 
improvement  of  the  play  compared  with  its  previ- 
ous form  or  forms,  one  of  which  may  have  been  the 
First  Quarto  (1597)  much  smaller  and  less  com- 


BOMEO     AND    JULIET  289 

plete.  Thus  we  behold  its  last  shape;  what  then 
was  its  first?  Doubtless  the  dramatic  hints  which 
rose  in  the  poet's  mind  from  his  early  reading  of 
Brooke's  poem.  That  was  the  original  germ  round 
which  his  materials  kept  gathering  for  years,  and 
which  took  up  and  assimilated  his  outer  informa- 
tion on  his  subject  as  well  as  his  inner  experience 
of  soul.  Such  are  the  two  extremes,  the  finished 
organism  and  its  originating  cell,  both  fairly  dis- 
cernible and  documented  in  cotemporaneous  print. 
But  what  intervening  steps  of  ascent  lay  between 
that  top  and  this  bottom?  These  are  doubtless 
largely  conjectural,  but  I  believe  that  of  them  we 
may  catch  the  general  outline. 

In  the  first  place  the  Italian  atmosphere  and 
spirit  which  are  so  characteristic  of  the  present 
poem,  are,  in  my  view,  the  result  of  Shakespeare's 
visit  to  Italy,  of  which  something  has  been  already 
said.  The  poet  required  his  subject  to  be  primarily 
saturated  with  his  own  immediate  experience  of 
life ;  this  was  what  his  genius  specially  needed  for 
its  work  of  artistic  transfiguration.  His  Italian 
Journey  probably  took  place  about  1592-3,  and 
naturally  the  poetic  traveler  carried  the  first 
draught  of  his  Romeo  and  Juliet,  as  well  as  that  of 
his  Venus  and  Adonis,  along  with  him  to  the  land 
of  art  and  poetry.  In  like  manner  Goethe  (we 
may  repeat)  who,  in  his  younger  time  had  con- 
ceived and  written  in  prose  his  Iphigenia  and  his 
Tasso,  rewrote  and  transformed  them  into  their 
present  poetic  completeness  while  in  Italy,  which 


290  SEAEESPEABE'8   LIFW-DBAMA 

land  gave  him  his  new  artistic  inspiration.  Yet 
how  different  was  the  effect  of  this  Italian  Journej'' 
upon  the  two  world-poets!  Goethe  sought  to  re- 
cover the  antique  form  and  spirit,  and  would  re- 
produce them  in  his  two  dramas,  while  Shakespeare 
appropriated  the  form  and  spirit  of  the  modern 
Italian  Renascence,  and  dropped  or  perchance 
transmuted  his  old-Roman  tendency.  Still  there 
is  no  doubt  he  saw  and  studied  ancient  art,  of 
which  Italy  was  so  full.  Thus  he  now  Italianized 
himself,  as  he  had  before  Romanized  himself,  for 
instance  in  Titus  Andronicus. 

But  the  second  and  far  more  distinctive  atmos- 
phere enveloping  Romeo  and  Juliet  is  that  of  love, 
youthful  love  of  man  and  woman,  which  here  finds 
its  sovereign  expression  in  human  writ.  Under- 
neath all  this  passionate  upburst  lay  also  a  corre- 
sponding personal  experience.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  during  these  years  Shakespeare  breasted  his 
first  overwhelming  tidal  wave  of  love,  which  per- 
sisted the  underlying  ever-driving  passion  of  his 
Life-drama.  For  now  the  Dark  Lady  starts  to 
weave .  her  voluptuous  but  fatuous  strand  not 
merely  into  his  emotions  but  into  the  very  soul 
of  his  creative  genius,  of  which  fact  we  catch  fre- 
quent shimmerings  reflected  from  the  glow  of  these 
tragical  lovers. 

Somewhere,  then,  between  the  completed  form  of 
his  drama  (Quarto  1599)  and  the  first  budding  of 
it,  say  some  eight  years  before,  lay  those  two  grand 
experiences,  his  trip  to  Italy  and  his  new  passion. 


EOMEO    AND    JULIET  291 

To  the  latter  the  transition  from  his  old  unrequited 
love,  imaged  in  Eomeo's  change  from  Rosaline  to 
Juliet,  is  made  with  some  emphasis  in  the  play, 
even  if  it  is  already  found  in  Brooke  as  well  as  in 
himself.  About  1595-6,  hence  after  his  return  from 
Italy,  the  Dark  Lady  begins  her  long  triumphant 
reign  over  his  heart  and  thence  over  his  creative 
energy,  whereof  we  find  a  more  or  less  continuous 
record  in  the  Sonnets. 

One  of  the  early  Sonnets  (No.  23)  may  be  taken 
to  represent  the  poet's  first  bashful  attempt  to  de- 
clare his  love,  so  that  he  begs  his  lady  to  look  into 
his  writ  for  what  he  has  been  unable  to  speak. 

As  an  imperfect  actor  on  the  stage 
Who  with  his  fear  is  put  besides  his  part, 
Or  some  fierce  thing  replete  with  too  much  rage, 
"Whose  strength's  abundance  weakens  his  own 

heart ; 
So  I,  for  fear  of  trust,  forget  to  say 
The  perfect  ceremony  of  love's  rite, 
And  in  mine  own  love's  strength  seem  to  decay 
O'ercharg'd  with  burden  of  mine  own  love's 

might. 
0  let  my  books  be  then  the  eloquence 
And  dumb  presagers  of  my  speaking  breast, 
Who  plead  for  love  and  look  for  recompense. 
More  than  that  tongue  that  more  hath  more 

expressed. 
0  learn  to  read  what  silent  love  hath  writ ; 
To  hear  with  eyes  belongs  to  love 's  fine  wit. 


292  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

Who  may  be  the  addressee  starts  the  problem  here 
as  everywhere  in  the  Sonnets — man,  woman,  or 
something  else.  In  the  above  case  only  a  woman 
approached  by  her  embarrassed  admirer  ' '  who  for- 
gets to  say  the  perfect  ceremony  of  love 's  rite ' '  fits 
the  situation.  The  poet,  though  he  stammer  help- 
less before  such  a  presence,  knows  that  in  his  books 
he  can  beat  the  world  in  expressing  love,  where  his 
lady  must  ''learn  to  read  what  silent  love  hath 
writ."  So  the  sonneteer  celebrates  his  power  of 
self-expression  through  his  pen  for  the  relief  of  his 
over-burdened  heart :  such  is  supremely  the  writer, 
his  book  is  his  confession  and  perchance  his  expia- 
tion. In  like  manner  the  dramatist  has  given  utter- 
ance to  his  own  intense  love-thrills  in  those  of 
Romeo;  but  he  goes  through  and  gets  rid  of  his 
passion's  tragedy  through  that  of  his  hero.  He 
saves  himself  by  slaying  his  tragic  counterpart. 
Still  this  play  is  but  the  overture  to  the  grand 
symphony  of  his  love-life  of  which  much  remains 
yet  to  be  lived  and  loved,  and  then  to  be  expressed. 
II.  Comedies  of  the  Present  Epoch.  Let  us  em- 
phasize the  main  point  at  the  start :  just  as  we  saw 
two  kinds  of  Tragedies  dividing  this  Second  Epoch, 
namely  the  pre-Italian  and  the  post-Italian,  so  we 
shall  find  the  same  division  of  it  in  the  Comedies 
belonging  here,  of  which  we  set  down  three  in  suc- 
cessive order — The  Comedy  of  Errors,  The  Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona,  and  Lovers  Labor's  Lost. 
This  may  be  also  the  chronological  sequence  of  these 
plays,    as   they   came   from  the   workshop   of  the 


COMEDIES    OF    PRESENT    EPOCH  293 

author;  but  there  is  not  proof  enough  at  hand  to 
decide  that  question.  Still  it  is  quite  generally 
agreed  that  they  all  belong  to  one  Epoch,  and  an 
early  one,  of  the  poet's  productivity. 

A  little  inspection,  however,  will  show  that  the 
first  one  The  Comedy  of  Errors  is  pre-Italian,  old- 
Roman  in  story,  names,  locality,  being  imitated 
from  a  classic  Latin  play.  Equally  certain  is  it 
that  the  next  Comedy  The  Two  Gentlemen  of 
Verona  is  Italianized  in  story,  names,  locality, 
with  a  personal  experience  of  places  lacking  in  the 
first.  But  the  third  Comedy  above  mentioned  em- 
braces both  sides,  being  made  up  of  a  pre-Italian 
as  well  as  a  post-Italian  element,  the  one  being 
derived  from  England  and  the  other  from  Italy, 
though  both  are  located  in  Navarre.  Thus  Love's 
Labor's  Lost  seems  a  coalescence,  if  not  a  reconcilia- 
tion of  English  and  Italian,  of  Northern  and 
Southern,  of  Teutonic  and  Romanic,  which  the  poet 
will  keep  working  at  and  repeating  throughout  his 
entire  Life-drama.  So  we  may  again  re-say:  he 
harmonized,  at  least  in  his  art,  Roma  and  Teutonia, 
tliat  primordial  deepest  dualism  of  Europe,  whereof 
the  first  pronounced  note,  even  if  not  yet  clarified 
is  heard  in  these  works. 

Such  is  the  inner  thread  of  connection  which  we 
shall  try  to  track  through  these  three  plays,  and 
show  them  as  three  consecutive  phases,  pre-Italian. 
post-Italian,  and  the  conjunction  of  the  two,  reveal- 
ing three  single  steps,  so  to  speak,  in  the  evolution 
of  the  universal  poet. 


294  SRAEESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

COMEDY  OF  ERRORS. 

Good  judges  have  pronounced  this  the  earliest 
play  of  Shakespeare  as  to  time  of  origin.  Quite 
possible,  but  there  is  no  real  proof;  and  it  has  to 
compete  with  several  others  for  such  first  starting 
place.  That  it  belongs  to  Shakespeare,  however, 
there  are  two  best  witnesses :  Francis  Meres  (1598) 
and  the  First  Folio  (1623).  It  is  still  seen  upon 
the  boards,  but  its  chief  interest  for  the  full- 
fiedged  Shakespearian  is  its  biographic  significance. 
It  is  permeated  with  the  poet's  Stratford  happen- 
ings, which  must  have  been  very  fresh  in  his  mind 
when  he  wrote  this  drama.  Of  course  he  throws 
his  own  experience  far  back  into  classic  antiquity, 
and  practises  this  early  dramatic  self-estrangement 
or  disguise  of  himself,  which  is  to  become  his  occu- 
I)ation  for  life.  So  we  have  here  a  chance  to  watch 
Shakespeare's  primal  transformation  of  his  own 
selfhood  into  his  art. 

Most  puppet-like  play  on  the  outside  in  all 
Shakespeare,  yet  very  germinal  of  his  future  work, 
containing  many  of  its  embryons :  this  Comedy  of 
Errors,  superficial  as  it  seems,  is  deserving  of  a  far 
deeper  and  more  appreciative  study  as  a  phase  in 
the  evolution  of  Shakespeare  than  I  have  yet  seen 
in  any  of  the  hundred  and  one  commentators.  It 
is  a  very  bright,  rapid,  superficial,  but  compre- 
hensive labyrinth  of  Accident  and  of  the  manifold 
illusions  caused  by  it  in  man's  individual  and  as- 
sociative life ;  for  not  only  single  persons  but  insti- 


COMEDY    OF    EBB0B8  295 

tutions — Family,  State,  the  Business  World  and 
the  Social  Order — get  entangled  in  its  gossamer- 
woven  meshes  of  deceptive  appearances.  The  hu- 
man being'  is  shown  the  victim  of  Chance,  his  senses 
simply  tell  him  lies,  and  he  becomes  the  sport  of 
the  grand  Hindoo  Maya  for  a  while  at  least.  So 
the  hapless  wayfarer  is  brought  to  believe  himself 
a  lost  soul  in  a  devil-ruled  Inferno ;  no  wonder  that 
the  poor  mortal  Antipholus,  mirage-led  through 
falsehood 's  maze  of  a  world,  loses  himself  externally 
and  internally,  exclaiming 

Am  I  in  earth,  in  heaven  or  in  hell  ? 
Sleeping  or  waking  1  mad  or  well-advised  ? 
Known  unto  these  and  to  myself  disguised ! 

Still  we  are  never  to  forget  that  the  course  of 
the  drama  shows  this  lying  realm  of  Chance  to  be 
undone  and  indeed  self -undone;  the  false  plays 
false  to  itself  and  thus  betrays  itself  as  truly  false. 
Hence  the  whole  action  is  comic,  ridiculous,  vanish- 
ing in  a  laugh  of  the  spectators,  who  sit  outside 
and  above  these  cozening  appearances.  But  the 
victim,  who  is  enmeshed  in  them,  will  tremblingly 
whisper : 

This  town  (world)  is  full  of  cozenage — 
As  nimble  jugglers  that  deceive  the  eye 
Dark-working  sorcerers  that  change  the  mind. 
Soul-killing  witches  that  deform  the  body, 
Disguised  cheaters,  prating  mountebanks 
And  many  such-like  liberties  of  sin . 


296  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

So  the  lie-beridden  soul  will  try  to  run  away  from 
his  own  untruth,  but  runs  right  into  it  again,  since 
it  rises  before  him  everywhere,  till  he  goes  through 
it  and  masters  its  sense-deceiving  prestidigitation. 
Whereof  this  comedy  of  ''Errors",  that  is,  of  Il- 
lusions, inner  and  outer,  gives  quite  a  serious  lesson 
just  through  its  laughter. 

The  means  here  employed  is  called  Mistaken 
Identity,  or  Misplaced  Personality,  in  which  the 
wrong  person  is  taken  for  the  right  one,  and  the 
right  person  in  his  turn  is  taken  for  the  wrong  one : 
so  we  may  state  the  matter  in  popular,  if  not  very 
correct  phrasing.  Then  two  sets  of  Mistaken  Iden- 
tities represented  in  the  two  groups  of  twins — the 
two  Antipholuses  and  the  two  Dromios — are  thrown 
all  commingled  together  into  this  sense-world, 
whereby  they  and  it  are  subjected  to  the  grand 
discipline  of  Illusion,  or  ' '  Error ' '  as  the  poet  terms 
it.  Still  further,  the  identity  (or  resemblance) 
extends  not  only  to  the  looks  of  the  twins,  but  to 
their  names  and  even  to  their  dress.  Thus  an  out- 
side and  unknown  power  seems  to  be  directing 
them  like  so  many  puppets  into  all  sorts  of  mis- 
taken cognitions  and  recognitions,  for  which  they 
get  in  one  way  or  other  mistaken  punishments  as 
well  as  mistaken  loves.  So  these  good  Christians 
begin  in  their  extremity  to  think  of  prayer,  though 
the  drama  is  set  in  ancient  Greek  Heathendom: 

0  for  my  beads ;  I  cross  me  for  a  sinner ! 
This  is  the  fairy  land :  0  spite  of  spites ! 


COMEDY    OF    EBBOBS  297 

We  talk  with  goblins,  owls,  and  elvish  sprites : 

If  we  obey  them  not,  this  will  ensue, 

They'll  suck  our  breath,  or  pinch  us  black  and 

blue. 
r 

And  now  in  accord  with  the  purpose  of  this  book 
of  ours  we  have  to  ask,  what  has  Shakespeare's 
liife-drama  to  do  with  this  variegated  tangle  of 
Mistaken  Identities?  A  good  deal  of  straight-out 
personal  experience  he  could  have  enjoyed  in  this 
matter  within  his  own  family.  His  father,  John 
Shakespeare  of  Henley  Street,  trader,  ale-taster, 
butcher  and  what  not,  had  his  double  in  name  right 
in  Stratford,  to-wit,  John  Shakespeare,  the  thriving 
shoemaker  of  Bridge  Street,  which  fact  could 
hardly  help  causing  to  outsiders  and  even  to  towns- 
men some  confusion,  and  must  have  been  known  to 
the  quick-witted  fun-loving  lad  William  Shake- 
speare. And  one  rather  faint  report  has  reached 
us  that  both  these  Johns  had  for  wives  two  Marys, 
whereby  the  identity  in  names  becomes  again 
doubled.  Now  it  so  happens  that  some  of  the  busi- 
ness troubles  of  our  John  Shakespeare  have  been 
mistakenly  ascribed  to  shoemaker  John  by  certain 
modern  writers ;  thus  a  small  bit  of  the  real  Shake- 
spearian Comedy  of  Errors  has  been  staged  in  our 
day. 

Let  us  now  imagine  our  school-boy,  sprightly 
William,  during  this  time  to  take  a  reading  lesson 
under  the  tuition  of  Master  Simon  Hunt  B.  A., 
graduate  of  Oxford,  in  Latin  Plautus,  whose  drama 


298  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Menaechmi  turns  just  on  a  case  of  Mistaken  Iden- 
tity, and  is  supposed  to  have  furnished  the  chief 
suggestions  for  Shakespeare's  own  Comedy  of  Er- 
rors. Would  not  the  alert  pupil  say  in  class:  ''I 
know  something  of  that  sort  right  here  in  Strat- 
ford; it  is  my  own  dad's  case" — a  Shakespearian 
household  word,  let  the  horrified  reader  reflect. 
Such  a  lesson  would  give  the  germ  of  his  future 
play — the  mistake  through  the  same  name.  Then 
the  mistake  through  personal  resemblance  is  even 
more  frequent.  Have  you  not,  my  dear  sir,  mis- 
taken and  been  mistaken  often  in  that  same  way — 
taken  some  one  for  somebody  else  and  been  your- 
self so  taken?  Of  such  kind  are  the  gifts  of  expe- 
rience out  of  which  the  Genius  conjures  his  poetic 
fabric. 

Thus  he  dramatizes  his  own  immediate  observa- 
tion into  the  Latin  transmitted  model,  which,  how- 
ever, he  amplifies  and  improves.  Both  elements, 
the  transmitted  and  the  original,  are  necessary  for 
him  and  will  last  him  through  life.  Note  too  that 
this  little  work  flows  all  of  a  piece,  shows  a  per- 
vasive unity  both  of  form  and  of  spirit,  and  seems 
to  have  been  finished  at  one  long  pull  of  breath,  as 
it  were  under  a  single  unbroken  inspiration.  More- 
over it  is  Shakespeare 's  shortest  play,  counting  only 
1770  lines,  while  Hamlet  (3929  lines)  is  more  than 
twice  as  long,  and  so  are  several  other  of  his  trage- 
dies. It  has  no  division  into  Southern  and  North- 
ern characters,  into  Latin  and  English  elements, 
such  as  we  see  in  quite  all  his  later  dramas,  both 


COMEDY    OF    EEBOES  299 

Comedies  and  Tragedies.  Even  the  clowns  here 
speak  in  verse  with  two  or  three  small  exceptions 
of  prose,  which  may  be  taken  as  the  start  of  the 
I)oet's  later  habit.  In  this  respect  also  the  present 
play  is  germinal. 

On  account  of  such  an  external  sport  of  contin- 
gencies, which,  however,  are  nicely  and  subtly  dove- 
tailed into  one  another,  we  have  here  the  appear- 
ance of  a  highly  complicated  mechanism,  of  a  many- 
threaded  spinning- jenny  moved  by  an  outside  un- 
seen power.  Thus  it  lays  bare  the  pure  machinery 
of  all  dramatic  construction;  or  we  may  deem  it 
the  stripped  skeleton  of  Comedy's  very  organism, 
which  is  hereafter  to  be  covered  by  the  life-artist 
with  living  flesh.  For  such  reason  it  is  the  least 
soulful,  the  least  inward-revealing  of  all  Shake- 
speare's dramas,  though  it  mirrors  a  good  many 
external  incidents  of  the  poet's  juvenescence. 
Hence  it  often  recalls  Stratford,  I  believe  it  to  be 
on  the  whole  more  Stratfordian  than  any  other  pro- 
duction of  his  Muse,  though  there  is  somewhat  of 
his  Stratford  discipline  in  all  his  writ,  and  more 
particularly  in  his  earlier  efforts. 

And  now  we  come  to  consider  the  one  very  pro- 
nounced exception  to  the  more  or  less  external  pup- 
petry of  this  drama,  even  if  it  must  be  granted  that 
there  are  some  marked  differences  (but  rather  con- 
ventional) of  character  peeping  out  of  the  obliter- 
ating identities  between  the  two  Dromios.  These, 
however,  we  shall  hurry  by  in  order  to  stress  the 
one  living  incarnation  in  this  comedy:    it  is  the 


300  SEAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

iully  vitalized  woman  Adriana,  wife  of  Ephesian 
Antopholus.  Read  her  part  all  through  the  play, 
and  you  will  feel  in  it  the  throb  of  immediate  ex- 
perience beating  out  of  the  heart  of  the  author, 
who  is  here  warily  telling  on  himself  and  his  own 
household,  and  not  merely  fabricating  out  of  his 
head  a  highly  convoluted  amazing  gim crack  for  the 
idle  diversion  of  his  theatrical  audience.  To  be 
sure,  by  way  of  contrast  and  opposition  to  Adriana, 
her  sister  Luciana  gets  endowed  with  a  consider- 
able amount  of  vital  portraiture,  so  that  we  see  in 
her  petite  features  the  germs  of  a  number  of  the 
poet's  later  and  more  fully  evolved  women-char- 
acters. 

Accordingly  we  are  now  permitted  to  overhear 
Shakespeare  at  home  with  his  rather  oldish  wife, 
who,  notwithstanding  has  in  less  than  three  years 
presented  to  him  three  babies — he  being  still  under 
age  and  having  no  money  and  little  earning  power. 
Hence  we  soon  catch  her  self-pitying  outcry:  '*a 
wretched  soul,  bruised  with  adversity'',  and  she 
spurns  '^this  fool-begged  patience"  which  is  so 
easily  advised  by  her  unmarried  sister  Luciana. 
Moreover  the  still  juvenile  Shakespeare  has  got  the 
habit  of  straying  £rom  his  too  domestic  household, 
as  we  can  hear  in  the  poor  wife's  bitter  reproaches, 
for  instance 

But  he,  the  unruly  deer,  he  breaks  the  pale 
And  feeds  from  home ;  poor  I  am  but  his  stale. 

The  result  is  a  knifing  jealousy  weaponed  with  an 
ever- whetted  tongue,  which  she  fails  not  to  un- 


COMEDY     OF    EBBOBS  301 

sheathe  and  slash  at  him  whenever  he  crosses  his 
own  door-sill.  Who  is  this  ' '  poor  I ' '  who  can  pour 
so  much  reality  into  her  sorrows?  Of  course  it  is 
Adriana,  a  wife  living  in  far-away  Ephesus,  and 
talking  a  kind  of  Greek  which  the  reader  must 
translate  into  Stratfordese,  if  he  wishes  to  under- 
stand what  it  is  all  about. 

Then  we  feel  to  be  almost  cruel,  indeed  unnat- 
ural, the  outspoken  w^ay  in  which  the  poet  makes 
that  home-tied  wife  uncover  not  only  her  domestic 
situation,  but  also  her  physical  and  mental  short- 
comings. For  while  the  all-gifted  youth  ranges 
abroad  and  showers  the  gems  of  his  genius  both  in 
love  and  poesy  upon  ''his  minions",  chiefly  female, 

I  at  home  starve  for  a  merry  look — 
Hath  homely  age  the  alluring  beauty  took 
From  my  poor  cheek?    Then  he  hath  wasted  it. 

Did  he  not  hear  this  from  ageing  Anne  Hathaway 
more  than  once?  And  is  he  not  the  real  source  of 
her  wreckage?  Or  is  it  that  antique  Ephesian 
Dame  Adriana  who  has  been  ''ruined"  in  form 
and  feature  by  bearing  three  children  to  her  hus- 
band, the  young  and  dashing  Antipholus,  in  less 
than  three  years,  though  such  special  circumstance 
she  naturally  does  not  mention?    But  listen: 

That 's  not  my  fault — he  is  master  of  my  state — 

What  ruins  are  in  me  that  can  be  found 

By  him  not  ruined  ?    Then  is  he  the  ground 

Of  my  defeatures. 

A  sunny  look  of  his  would  soon  repair — 


302  SHAKE8PE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

but  no  sunburst  can  seemingly  break  through  that 
eternal  domestic  storm-cloud.  Still  further,  our 
hapless  Adriana  is  made  to  confess  her  intellectual 
deficiencies  in  the  eyes  of  her  Antipholus : 

Are  my  discourses  dull  ?  barren  my  wit  ? 
If  voluble  and  sharp  discourse  be  marred, 
Unkindness  blunts  it  more  than  marble  hard. 

Really  we  may  catch  Shakespeare  telling  on  him- 
self in  these  and  similar  passages,  and  revealing 
the  trend  of  his  fateful  domesticities.  He  pours 
molten  into  these  burning  words  of  wife  Adriana 
his  own  blood-hot  personal  experiences;  and  one 
chief  indication  is  that  he  forgets  himself  in  his 
intensity  and  falls  out  of  his  role,  for  surely  this 
Adriana  (or  Anne  Hathaway)  is  not  barren  of 
wit  or  dull  of  discourse.  In  fact,  she  is  just  as 
witty,  just  as  poetic,  just  as  overflowing  with  young 
genius  as  young  William  himself,  if  not  rather 
more  so  than  usual,  for  the  reason  that  he  gets  to 
voicing  through  her  words  his  own  deepest  Life- 
drama.  By  the  way  this  dropping  of  the  formal 
role  for  himself  we  shall  often  detect  as  a  sign  of 
the  self -intrusion  of  the  real  Shakespeare,  and  gen- 
erally at  his  mightiest.  Read  her  part  carefully 
and  you  will  say  that  this  shrewish  self-disparaging 
Adriana  is  the  most  capable,  the  most  living  person 
in  the  play.  Shakespeare  would  never  have  quit 
such  a  wife,  with  a  genius  equal  to  his  own.  So 
we  shall  try  to  catch  and  to  hold  fast  our  Protean 
poet  in  his  thousandfold  transformations  till  he  re- 


COMEDY    OF    EBBOES 


veals  himself  in  his  one  true  fundamental  shape, 
which  not  infrequently  rises  to  the  surface  and  be- 
comes visible  and  distinct  from  Ids  vast  circum- 
ambient dramatic  ocean.  Watch  him  work  till  you 
can  sense  the  pure  gold  of  his  poetry,  as  it  starts 
to  flowing  out  of  the  heart  of  his  experience  into  its 
eternally  current  coinage  of  English  speech. 

Finally  we  dare  indentify  another  passage  of  this 
play  with  a  home-scene  in  Stratford.  In  the  last 
Act  we  begin  to  get  suspicious  when  the  good  moral 
Abbess  defends  the  wayward,  rather  un-moral 
Antipholus.  With  much  vigor  she  turns  her  tirade 
against  the  jealous  wife  Adriana : 

The  venom  clamors  of  a  jealous  woman 

Poisons  more  deadly  than  a  mad  dog's  tooth. 

It  seems  his  sleeps  were  hindered  by  thy  rail- 
ing    ..     . 

Thou  sayst  his  meat  was  sauced  with  thy  up- 
braidings. 

The  result  is,  as  points  the  partial  Abbess  sharply: 
thou  hast  ' '  scared  thy  husband  from  the  use  of  his 
wits."  No  very  religious  role  is  this  for  our  strict 
nun,  who  so  gently  touches  the  husband's  pecca- 
dillos when  his  roomy  eye 

Strayed  his  affection  in  unlawful  love — 
A  sin  prevailing  much  in  youthful  men 
Who  give  their  eyes  the  liberty  of  gazing. 

I  wonder  who  this  rather  prejudiced  woman- judge 
may  be.     My  guess  is,  mother  Mary  Arden  Shake- 


304  SEAEESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

speare  is  here  voiced  by  her  poetical  son  in  the 
great  family  dispute  which  led  to  his  flight  from 
Stratford.  Perhaps  some  faint  religious  tendency 
we  may  also  catch  in  her  note,  for  she  belonged  to 
a  Catholic  family,  though  probably  she  was  not  a 
Catholic  herself.  Thrice  mothered  we  dare  con- 
ceive this  maternal  Abbess,  being  not  only  the 
Christian  Mother  Superior  of  a  priory  in  heathen 
Ephesus,  but  also  the  dramatic  mother  of  Antipho- 
lus,  and  finally  the  real  mother  of  young  Shake- 
speare. 

Could  the  poet  help  remembering,  in  writing  this 
drama,  that  he  was  likewise  separated  from  his 
twin  babes,  having  been  wrecked  for  the  time  being 
in  his  life's  voyage  by  a  tempest,  doubtless  of  some 
violence?  No  exact  dates  are  possible,  or  needed, 
but  let  us  think  the  husband  within  a  couple  of 
years  after  leaving  his  wife  and  infants  behind  at 
Stratford,  meditating  and  composing  in  London 
this  play  of  the  storm-sundered  family,  as  a  me- 
mento of  his  past,  and  then  ideally  bringing  its 
scattered  members  together  again  at  the  close,  as 
a  prophetic  hope  of  the  future — which  early  dream 
this  Life-drama  of  his,  after  much  delay  and  dis- 
cipline, will  at  last  fulfil  in  the  deed.  So  the  Shake- 
spearian mother  (she  lived  till  1608)  finally  unites 
and  reconciles  the  disrupted  family.  Hence  the 
double-visioned  reader  may  see  not  merely  the 
Mother  Superior  of  a  far-away  drama  but  the 
Mother  Superior  of  the  poet  William  Shakespeare 
himself  now  writing  his  Life-drama,  as  she  hope- 


TWO     GENTLEMEN    OF    VEEONA  305 

fully  forecasts  her  son's  return  to  Stratford  and 
to  her,  in  these  final  tender  words  of  hers  entreat- 
ing the  gathered  household 

To  go  with  us  into  the  abbey  here, 
And  hear  at  large  discoursed  all  our  fortunes ; 
And  all  that  are  assembled  in  this  place, 
That  by  this  sympathized  one  day's  error 
Have  suffered  wrong,  go  keep  us  company, 
And  we  shall  make  full  satisfaction. 
Thirty  three  years  have  I  but  gone  in  travail 
Of  you,  my  sons — 

especially  of  that  one  darling  genius  of  a  son,  now 
happily  restored  to  her  after  long  separation. 

For  such  reasons  we  deem  the  present  play  very 
close  to  Shakespeare's  own  self  at  his  dramatic 
starting-point,  and  best  to  be  placed  several  years 
before  his  Italian  journey,  of  which  it  shows  no 
personally  experienced  trace.  But  his  next  drama 
is  mooded  to  a  different  key. 

THE  TWO  GENTLEMEN  OF  VERONA. 

Verona  connects  by  a  local  tie  this  play  with 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  or  the  two  lovers  of  Verona. 
But  also  in  style,  mood,  theme  both  dramas  inter- 
weave and  recall  each  other  for  the  sympathetic 
reader.  They  are  in  a  manner  paired,  though  the 
one  be  a  comedy  and  the  other  a  tragedy.  We  feel 
in  each  the  Italian  spell  of  the  poet,  and  its  dom- 
inant passion ;  both  were  probably  composed  about 


306  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

the  same  time  though  their  merits  be  so  different, 
ranging  the  whole  gamut  from  lofty  success  down 
quite  to  failure. 

Still  this  play  has  its  unique  place  and  value  in 
the  Life-drama  of  the  author,  and  is  truly  indis- 
pensible.  More  than  any  other  production  of  his  it 
tells  about  the  traveler  Shakespeare  on  his  Italian 
trip,  which  means  so  much  to  his  present  and  his 
future.  Also  it  gives  his  views  generally  about  the 
training  through  travel,  though  under  a  dramatic 
mask,  transparent  enough  when  seen  from  the  right 
angle  of  vision. 

Still  a  poor  drama :  I  may  dare  call  it  the  poor- 
est of  Shakespeare's  whole  thirty-six;  thin  for  him 
in  matter  and  in  power,  though  it  has  some  pretty 
rememberable  passages,  even  if  not  very  deep  and 
compelling,  like 

The  current  that  with  gentle  murmur  glides, 
Thou  know'st,  being  stopped,  impatiently  doth 

rage; 
But  when  his  fair  course  is  not  hindered 
He  makes  sweet  music  with  the  enamelled  stones, 
Giving  a  gentle  kiss  to  every  sedge 
He  overtaketh  in  his  pilgrimage; 
And  so  by  many  winding  nooks  he  strays 
With  willing  sport  to  the  wild  Ocean. 

Wherein  is  well  illustrated  this  play's  poetic  flow 
which  ripples  like  little  Avon  but  never  surges  to 
wildly  Oceanic  Shakespeare,  whose  speech  else- 
where frequently  roars  as  the  tempest  and  tosses 


TWO     GENTLEMEN    OF    VEBONA  307 

US  skyward.  Nor  is  the  characterization  very  ro- 
bust, but  runs  along  rather  shallow  and  formal; 
and  the  wind-up  is  a  right  break-down,  so  that  we 
cry  out  in  pain,  '^0  most  lame  and  impatient  con- 
clusion ! "  In  our  day  it  is  hardly  worth  a  serious 
reading  except  for  one  thing,  which  specially  con- 
cerns us  now:  it  carries  along  in  its  limpid  but 
insignificant  stream,  somewhat  under  the  surface  at 
times,  divers  important  personal  facts  about  the 
poet's  previous  experience. 

So  many  little  things  turn  up  like  Shakespeare, 
yet  without  the  burst  of  his  genius,  without  the  in- 
dividual seal  of  his  Muse,  that  if  I  should  come  into 
my  knowing  it  for  the  first  time,  I  would  say  to 
myself:  'Hhe  work  of  a  promising  but  youthful 
imitator ;  I  think  I  have  read  quite  as  good  repro- 
ductions of  Shakespeare  poetically  as  this  drama." 
But  the  real  objective  evidence  will  not  permit  us 
for  a  moment  to  assign  it  to  any  lesser  cotemporary 
playwright,  as  its  authenticity  is  vouched  for  by  the 
two  best  possible  witnesses:  the  First  Folio  (1623) 
where  it  is  printed  second  in  the  list  of  Comedies, 
and  the  word  of  Francis  Meres  (1598)  who  places 
it  first  of  his  six  cited  Comedies.  Thus  both  sources 
fully  authorize  it  and  also  hint  its  early  produc- 
tion, but  give  no  date. 

Hence  this  youthful  imitator  of  Shakespeare  is 
the  young  Shakespeare  himself,  and  his  seeming 
imitation  is  really  his  own  immature  but  growing 
production.  Still  we  must  repeat  that  the  more  it 
falls  short  in  poetic  value,  the  more  it  appears  to 


SHAKE SFE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 


increase  in  biographic  import ;  if  it  fails  to  grip  us 
as  a  single  drama  when  taken  alone,  it  more  than 
makes  up  the  loss  by  the  renewed  interest  in  itself 
when  considered  as  an  integral  part  and  connecting 
link  in  the  poet's  total  Life-drama,  whose  develop- 
ment is  now  our  supreme  endeavor. 

Accordingly  we  shall  tally  the  several  successive 
points  which  come  before  us  in  viewing  the  action 
from  the  present  angle. 

I.  At  the  start  the  play  stresses  the  cultural 
need  of  travel — of  separation  from  fireside  and 
country  in  case  of  the  ambitious  young  man,  such 
as  is  Shakespeare  now:  ''Home-keeping  youths 
have  ever  homely  wits. ' '  Hence  the  cry  is :  up  and 
be  off  on  thy  trip  to  foreign  lands,  where  it  is  thy 
better  lot 

To  see  the  wonders  of  the  world  abroad, 
Than  living  dully  sluggardized  at  home 
Wear  out  thy  youth  with  shapeless  idleness. 

So  says  Valentine  evidently  voicing  that  aspiring 
young  man  William  Shakespeare,  who  is  now 
tensely  minded  to  set  out  upon  his  travels.  The 
locality  is  declared  to  be  Italian  Verona,  and  the 
destination  thence  is  Milan,  seat  of  the  Emperor's 
court,  where  his  youth  will  not  be  worn  out  ''with 
shapeless  idleness. ' ' 

But  here  the  reader  soon  gets  inquisitive.  Verona 
and  Milan  are  in  the  same  country.  Northern  Italy, 
and  not  so  many  hours  distant  from  each  other. 
This  fact  Shakespeare  must  have  known  from  his 


TWO    GENTLEMEN    OF    VEEONA  309 

guide-book  or  from  his  Italian  teacher  at  London, 
Giovanni  Florio.  Why  then  such  a  big  flourish 
over  such  a  little  promenade?  No  Veronese  could 
possibly  say  or  think  that  he  was  starting  to  travel 
"abroad"  on  skipping  over  to  Milan,  and  there 
was  able  ''to  see  the  wonders  of  the  world."  But 
01  whom  could  such  a  statement  be  made?  Of  the 
])oet  himself  setting  out  from  London  on  his  con- 
siderable Italian  journey,  then  of  course  far  more 
difficult  than  now.  Here  again  we  may  catch 
Shakespeare  himself  peeping  out  from  behind  his 
mask,  and  even  telling  his  own  plan  of  travel.  StiU 
further  we  find  (IV.  1, 33)  that  this  Valentine 
Shakespeare  is  specially  gifted  with  "the  tongues" 
for  his  trip,  which  plural  word  may  well  hint,  be- 
sides English,  the  Italian  and  probably  the  French 
languages,  of  both  of  which  Shakespeare  shows 
himself  to  have  some  knowledge  in  his  plays.  But 
to  journey  from  Verona  to  Milan  the  Veronese 
traveler  would  surely  need  only  the  one  tongue,  his 
own  cultivated  Italian,  and  he  would  even  under- 
stand the  popular  dialect  of  Milan  which  is  not  so 
very  unlike  his  own.  But  our  Valentine  Shake- 
speare evidently  takes  a  good  deal  of  pleasure  in  his 
knowledge  of  ' '  the  tongues ' ',  as  we  may  catch  from 
his  wee  note  of  self-gratulation : 

My  youthful  travel  therein  made  me  happy 
Or  else  I  often  had  been  miserable. 

Moreover  this  accomplishment  is  one  of  the  reasons 
why  he  is  suddenly  promoted  to  be  captain  of  a 


310  SHAKE8PE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

band  of  outlaws,  as  they  are  just  now  seeking  for 
''a  linguist  and  a  man  of  such  perfection",  who 
also  is  ''beautified  with  goodly  shape".  Very  ap- 
preciative of  Shakespeare's  excellences  are  those 
Robin  Hood  rangers  of  the  ' '  Forest  near  Milan ' ' : 

We  '11  do  thee  homage  and  be  ruled  by  thee 
Love  thee  as  our  commander  and  our  King. 

And  now  we  are  to  consider  the  second  and  even 
more  emphatic  appraisement  of  travel.  Proteus, 
friend  of  Valentine,  has  been  held  at  home  in 
Verona  by  love,  so  that  he  refused  to  budge  from 
the  town.  The  result  is  that  his  father  is  impor- 
tuned by  a  friendly  adviser  to  take  in  hand  his 
untraveled  son: 

To  let  him  spend  his  time  no  more  at  home, 
Which  would  be  great  impeachment  to  his  age 
In  having  known  no  travel  in  his  youth. 

The  anxious  parent  has  been  already  '* hammering" 
at  the  problem,  and  we  hear  again  a  little  disserta- 
tion on  the  cultural  value  of  traveled  experience, 
in  which  we  have  to  think  also  of  the  poet : 

I  have  considered  well  his  loss  of  time, 
And  how  he  cannot  be  a  perfect  man 
Not  being  tried  and  tutored  in  the  world. 
Experience  is  by  industry  achieved 
And  perfected  by  the  swift  course  of  time. 

But  the  next  question  is:  ''Whither  were  I  best 
to  send  him?"     This  was  doubtless  Shakespeare's 


TWO    GENTLEMEN    OF    VEBONA  311 

own  question  to  himself.  The  answer  runs :  to  Mi- 
lan, now  capital  of  Italy,  which  is  the  high  abode 
of  ''the  Emperor's  court".  Hither  accordingly 
Proteus,  too,  the  son,  has  to  speed  after  Valentine. 

So  much  investigation  we  have  spent  upon  this 
overture  of  travel  in  the  present  play,  since  it  mir- 
rors with  some  detail  a  memorable  passage  in 
Shakespeare's  Life-drama:  his  journey  from  home 
abroad,  from  London  to  Italy.  Also  it  hints  the 
transition  from  the  purely  Classic  discipline  of  his 
previous  stage  to  the  culture  of  the  Italian  Rena- 
scence, which  will  live  with  him  in  one  form  or 
other  to  the  close  of  his  career.  Thus  we  are  here 
made  to  pass  from  the  spiritual  atmosphere  of  the 
Comedy  of  Errors  to  that  of  the  Two  Gentlemen  of 
Verona — a  weighty  experience  in  the  poet's  evolu- 
tion. 

At  this  connecting  point  we  may  touch  upon 
certain  difficulties.  In  the  first  place  Shakespeare 
implies  that  Verona  is  a  sea-port  with  i^hips  at 
anchor  and  ready  to  sail.  So  Valentine  says  on 
leaving: 

My  father  at  the  road   (harbor) 
Expects  my  coming,  there  to  see  me  shipped — 

Whereat  much  Herculean  labor  from  the  com- 
mentators, even  to  the  extent  of  digging  up  from 
old  records  a  forgotten  canal  between  Verona  and 
Milan,  both  of  them  seemingly  inland  cities.  But 
here  let  it  be  said  that  our  dramatist  often  masks 
his  geography  as  well  as  his  deeds  and  himself.    So 


312  SB AKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Valentine  Shakespeare  finds  no  difficulty  in  taking 
ship  from  Verona — London — for  fair  Italy,  and 
even  for  Milan,  nor  did  his  English  audience,  nor 
need  you,  his  reader  to-day,  though  expert  in 
geography. 

Another  crux  for  most  of  us,  though  generally 
sliunned  by  the  poet's  expositors,  is  that  above- 
cited  expression  ''shapeless  idleness"  which  will 
''wear  out  thy  (Shakespeare's)  youth  dully  slug- 
gardized  at  home."  Here  seems  hinted  the  special 
trouble  which  is  to  be  cured  by  the  journey  to  Italy, 
to  form-giving  Italy,  which  has  the  power  to 
remedy  the  young  poet's  sodden  inartistic  shape- 
lessness.  A  similar  reason  Goethe  assigns  for  his 
Italian  journey:  he,  the  shapeless  Northerner, 
would  take  up  and  make  his  own  the  peculiar  gift 
of  the  formful  South  in  its  art.  That  also  Shake- 
speare won  and  employed  this  unique  excellence 
derived  from  renascent  Italy,  can  be  traced 
throughout  his  whole  coming  achievement. 

II.  One  of  these  two  Veronese  gentlemen,  Val- 
entine, we  have  seen  setting  out  on  his  travels  with 
single-minded  determination,  so  that  from  the  start 
we  feel  his  strength  of  purpose  in  accord  with  his 
name  (from  Latin  valeo).  Thus  Valentine  im- 
presses us  with  his  will,  is  indeed  a  will-character. 
In  marked  contrast  with  him  is  limned  the  inner 
nature  of  his  friend,  labeled  with  evident  design 
Proteus,  a  changeful  fluctuating  spirit,  if  there 
ever  was  one — in  fine  an  emotional  character.  The 
name  suggests  the  infinitely  variable  in  form,  like 


TWO     GENTLEMEN    OF     VEBONA  313 

the  sea- waves,  once  be-sung  of  old  Proteus  in  the 
Odyssey.  Moreover  it  brings  a  suggestion  out  of 
our  boy's  book  of  tales,  Ovid's  Metamorphoses, 
which  is  literally  a  Protean  work,  showing  many 
transformations  from  manifold  causes.  But  the 
chief  cause  in  the  case  of  this  present  Proteus  is 
love  with  its  numberless  caprices  and  moody  turns. 
Hence  Proteus  addresses  his  adorable  quite  in 
Ovidian  reminiscence : 

Thou,  Julia,  hast  metamorphosed  me. 
Made  me  neglect  my  studies,  lose  my  time. 
War  with  good  counsel,  set  the  world  at  nought. 
Made  wit  with  musing  weak,  heart  sick  with 
thought. 

Such  is  the  poet's  own  inner  condition,  his  emo- 
tional ups  and  downs,  which  he  has  painted  all  his 
life  in  thousandfold  iridescence.  So  we  have  to 
think  that  here  we  glimpse  Shakespeare  again  self- 
portrayed  with,  a  look  back  upon  his  Stratford 
studies.  Now  he  is  the  counterpart  to  strong-willed 
Valentine,  the  other  half  of  himself,  and  becomes 
the  ever-yielding  victim  of  love's  emotions,  not 
their  suppressor  and  exterminator.  Thus  we,  like 
ancient  Ulysses,  are  summoned  to  watch  the  inner 
metamorphoses  of  this  new  Proteus  Shakespeare, 
in  contrast  with  his  other  and  opposite  moiety,  the 
well-anchored  Valentine  Shakespeare. 

In  such,  fashion  we  find  our  poet  dramatizing 
his  own  myriad-minded  selfhood  into  many  diverse 
characters.    Here  two  opposing  kinds  or  phases  of 


314  SEAKESPE ARE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

himself  he  projects  into  two  of  his  dramatic  person- 
ages. His  present  dual  nature  he  sets  forth  in  all 
its  duality;  a  double-souled  mortal  Shakespeare 
reveals  himself,  reminding  us  of  his  world-poetical 
brother,  Goethe,  who  in  his  Faust  feelingly  ex- 
claims that  he  has  two  ever-separating  souls  in  his 
breast : 

Zwei  Seelen  wohnen,  ach !   in  dieser  Brust, 
Die  eine  will  sieh  von  der  andern  trennen. 

III.  Still  in  this  drama  likewise  there  is  evolved 
and  enthroned  the  one  all-conqueror,  Love,  who  at 
last  seizes  and  overwhelms  his  former  contemptu- 
ous and  defiant  foe,  none  other  than  our  will- 
powerful  Valentine,  who,  having  traveled  all  the 
way  from  Verona  to  Milan,  sees  the  daughter  of  the 
Duke,  the  high-born  and  beautiful  Silvia,  and  on 
the  spot  succumbs.  And  the  thing  has  been  done 
with  such  celerity  and  vehement  effervescence  of 
emotion  that  his  servant  jester  Speed  has  noted  it, 
and  rallies  his  master  as  having  become  just  ''like 
Sir  Proteus. ' '  Moreover  the  fellow  has  also  caught 
from  his  superiors  a  shred  of  Ovidian  phraseology, 
chaffing  his  lord  thus:  ''Now  you  (too)  are  meta- 
morphosed with  a  mistress,  that,  when  I  look  on 
you,  I  can  hardly  think  you  my  master. ' ' 

Here  we  detect  again  the  confession  of  the  poet 
crowning  Love  the  sovereign  not  simply  of  this 
drama,  but  of  his  life ;  both  sides  of  his  double  na- 
ture, the  Will  and  the  Emotion,  have  submitted  to 
one  autocrat.     Shakespeare  acknowledges  himself 


TWO     GENTLEMEN    OF    VEBONA  315 

the  lover  supreme  over  the  friend,  even  if  at  the 
end  of  the  play  he  briefly  and  feebly  tries  to  recon- 
cile love  and  friendship,  the  two  colliding  dramatic 
motives.  He,  the  good-looking,  well-mannered 
gentleman,  endowed  with  all  the  magic  of  genius, 
finds  himself  the  charmer  of  women  and  of  men 
too;  witty,  overflowing  with  the  poetry  of  speech 
in  his  common  talk,  conceivably  sympathetic  of 
look  (the  Italian  simpatico),  sinning  indeed  but 
also  sinned  against,  fascinating  but  himself  fas- 
cinated the  more,  he  the  victorious  lover  is  bound 
to  become  the  prey  of  love.  Though  all  the  Julias 
of  London  run  after  him  in  their  disguise,  and  be- 
come his  slaves,  one  of  them,  perchance  just  the 
most  Protean  female,  will  ensnare  and  enslave  and 
fix  fast  our  ever-shifting  Proteus.  But  this  his 
deepest  experience  will  stir  his  genius  from  its  last 
depths,  and  compel  him  to  an  enormous  creation, 
for  he,  the  poet,  can  only  get  relief  from  his  heart- 
quakes  through  an  ever-flowing  musical  self-ex- 
pression. Not  without  reason  have  some  delving 
interpreters,  doubtless  themselves  experienced  of: 
the  same  fact,  found  already  in  this  play  traces  of 
the  coming  sinister  Dark  Lady,  veiled  in  his 
Dramas,  but  unveiled  in  his  Sonnets. 

IV.  Let  us  note  again  the  transition  from  the 
preceding  Comedy  of  Errors  to  the  present  The 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  from  outer  Accident  to 
inner  Caprice,  from  an  illusive  objective  sense- 
world  to  a  changeful  subjective  love-world,  from  an 
external  play  of  chances  to  an  internal  play  of  emo- 


316  SHAKESFE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

tions.  Both  have  the  common  dramatic  frame- 
work of  parallel  characters :  two  sets  of  lovers  here, 
two  sets  of  mistakers  there;  both  seem  a  fixed 
mechanism  of  the  movement  of  life's  marionettes, 
though  the  one  set  appears  moved  from  without, 
and  the  other  from  within.  And  especially  let  us 
not  forget  the  transition  from  the  Latinizing  to  the 
Italianizing  dramatist. 

With  this  work,  accordingly,  Shakespeare  starts 
the  long  love-line  of  characters,  men  and  more  dis- 
tinctively women,  comic,  tragic,  tragi-comic,  who 
move  through  his  full-rounded  Pan-drama  till  its 
finale.  Herein  lies  his  universal  appeal,  his  world- 
note  of  popularity.  Repeatedly  in  this  play  the 
key-word  struck  and  made  to  vibrate  through  all 
these  young  hearts  is  love.  Yet  what  the  poet 
yearns  to  express  remains  still  the  inexpressible : 

Didst  thou  but  know  the  inly  touch  of  Love 
Thou  wouldst  as  soon  go  kindle  fire  with  snow 
As  seek  to  quench  the  fire  of  Love  with  words. 

Just  that  inly  touch  of  Love  is  what  the  poet  has 
now  experienced,  and  he  will  keep-on  trying  to  word 
it  through  young-manhood,  middle-age,  to  the  verge 
of  old-age.  Observe  that  inly  touch  as  distinct 
from  other  forms  of  Love;  mark  too  the  tender 
soulful  adjective  inly,  now  quite  lost  in  English, 
though  still  heard  and  felt  in  the  corresponding 
German  innig.  Even  if  it  be  spoken  by  a  woman, 
Shakespeare  has  here  given  his  experience  (prob- 
ably just  won)  of  Love  the  eternal,  and  he  becomes 


TWO     GENTLEMEN     OF     VEEONA  317 

not  merely  the  lover,  but  the  lover  of  Love  and  the 
immortal  voice  thereof;  Phileros  we  may  title  him 
after  the  old  Greek  Mythns. 

I  do  not  think  that  Julia  has  yet  become  the 
Dark  Lady,  certainly  not  the  Darkest  Lady  of  the 
Sonnets,  as  some  have  held.  Still  she  bridges  over 
an  intermediate  but  probably  unrequited  heart- 
stroke,  from  which,  however,  the  poet  wins  the  un- 
forgetable  experience  of  'Hhe  inly  touch  of  Love", 
and  takes  it  along  with  himself  till  life 's  * '  cockshut 
time". 

On  the  whole,  the  highest  characters  in  the  play, 
the  most  constant,  the  most  heroic,  are  the  women, 
so  that  if  titular  justice  were  done,  it  should  be 
called  The  Two  Gentlewomen  of  Verona,  since  these 
are  much  worthier  of  the  gentle  title  than  the  two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona,  both  of  whom  show  them- 
selves faithless  to  Love.  Proteus,  most  fickle  of 
men,  is  traitor  to  his  lady,  ingrate  to  his  friend,  and 
liar  to  Thurio.  And  Valentine  is  ready  to  give  up 
his  loved  one  to  his  friend — a  sacrifice  friendship 
ought  not  to  ask,  still  less  to  offer.  Again  Shake- 
speare is  seen  conceiving  and  constructing  much 
better  women  than  men.  Why?  Look  back  into 
his  primal  originating  home-life,  at  whose  center 
stood  his  woman  of  women,  his  mother. 

So  those  two  Gentlewomen  ought  to  have  shown 
the  door  to  those  two  Gentlemen  at  the  end  of  the 
play,  making  it  really  a  Love's  Labor's  Lost.  You 
would  have  done  so,  even  if  the  great  dramatist 
not  only  spares  but  rewards  those  ungentlemanly 


318  SHAKESPT: ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

Gentlemen  with  the  dearest  prize  of  the  human 
heart.  I  think  that  Shakespeare  himself  must  have 
lelt  this  awful  discord  in  his  music-forcing  close, 
and  have  resolved  to  correct  it  in  his  next  play, 
which  is  a  real  dramatic  Love's  Labor's  Lost  in 
name  and  action,  though  the  love-lorn  losers  of 
Navarre  are  not  half  so  deserving  of  an  unhappy 
lot  as  the  two  happy  Gentlemen  of  Verona. 

LOVE'S  LABOR'S  LOST 

First  is  to  be  stressed  that  the  present  play  com- 
bines the  two  strains,  pre-Italian  and  post-Italian, 
which  we  found  separate  in  the  two  preceding 
plays,  namely  in  The  Comedy  of  Errors  and  in  The 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona.  It  should  be  here 
added  that  each  of  these  productions  seems  to  have 
been  written  during  one  mood  of  the  poet,  or  at 
one  gush  of  his  creative  energy,  being  quite  homo- 
geneous throughout.  That  is,  each  of  these  dramas 
has  its  own  uniform  style  and  character,  while 
Love's  Labor's  Lost  is  decidedly  heterogeneous 
within  itself,  containing  some  of  his  earliest  ven- 
tures along  with  his  more  mature  work. 

In  fact,  the  present  comedy  seems  to  have  been 
used  by  the  poet  as  a  store-house  or  general  reser- 
\oir  into  which  he  dumped  a  lot  of  miscellaneous 
compositions  of  very  slight  inner  connection.  It 
becomes  a  kind  of  dramatic  curiosity-shop  through 
which  we  wander  curiously  inspecting  and  testing 
all  sorts  of  literary  forms,  since  here  we  find  folk- 


LOVE'S    LABOB'S    LOST  319 

songs,  ballads,  sonnets,  doggerels,  proverbs  rhymed 
and  unrhymed,  as  well  as  prose  and  blank  verse, 
truly' a  museum  of  many-mooded  effusions  thrown 
into  a  drama. 

Correspondingly,  as  many  different  dates  have 
been  assigned  to  its  origin  as  it  has  literary  diversi- 
ties. Critics  vary  as  to  the  time  of  its  birth  some 
eight  or  even  ten  years.  Editor  Richard  Grant 
White  says  1588,  and  not  later;  the  other  extreme 
may  be  taken  to  be  the  Quarto  of  1598,  whose  title 
page  affirms  it  to  have  been  ''newly  corrected  and 
augmented  by  W.  Shakespeare ' ',  wherein  is  implied 
that  there  was  a  previous  edition  or  exemplar  of  it 
less  correct  and  less  complete.  This  evidence,  good 
in  itself,  we  are  the  more  inclined  to  accept  since 
the  play  shows  marks  of  two  very  different  recen- 
sions, the  later  one  seemingly  much  more  Italian- 
ized than  the  other  in  meter,  style  and  spirit.  Be- 
tween these  two  dates  (1588-1598),  quite  every 
year  has  been  pre-empted  by  some  critic  for  the 
play's  starting-point  with  equal  proof  and  equal 
lack  of  proof. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  such  dispersion  of  critical 
opinion  has  its  source  and  its  image  in  the  dis- 
I>ersion  of  the  play  itself.  Now  to  our  mind  the 
best  way  of  bringing  some  order  into  this  chaos  is 
to  grasp  fast  the  two  cardinal  divisions  of  it,  the 
pre-Italian  and  post-Italian,  both  of  which  are  very 
strikingly  marked  in  the  drama,  showing  an  Eng- 
lish element  and  a  Southern  element,  each  of  which, 
however,  has  its  sub-divisions. 


320  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

''On  the  whole  the  worst  jumbled-up  play  in  all 
Shakespeare",  so  the  average  reader  impatiently 
exclaims  as  he  seeks  to  find  his  way  through  this 
tangled  mass  of  riotous  imagination.  The  result 
is  that  the  present  work  has  gotten  the  bad  name 
of  being  rather  the  most  unreadable  production  of 
the  poet,  bringing  often  the  ordinary  honest  ex- 
plorer to  a  full  stop  somewhere  in  the  middle  of  its 
tropical  wilderness.  Not  that  it  is  Shakespeare's 
thinnest  and  feeblest  piece,  as  is  sometimes  said ;  on 
the  contrary  it  is  too  luxuriant  and  overgrown  in 
its  way;  very  rich  it  is  indeed,  especially  rich  in 
chaos.  But  when  we  consider  that  it  represents  a 
phase  or  probably  two  (or  more)  coalescent  phases 
of  Shakespeare's  own  self  which  he  has  here  pro- 
jected into  writ,  we  again  open  the  book,  and  the 
interest  starts  up  afresh,  as  we  strike  a  new  trail 
of  that  elusive  yet  ever-evolving  personality  of  the 
poet  whose  jungle-play  this  is,  and  whose  jungle- 
mood  it  mirrors.  Thus  we  begin  again  threading 
the  tortuous  maze  eagerly  with  the  best  companion 
in  the  world,  namely  Shakespeare  himself,  who  is 
really  the  clew  of  this  whole  dramatic  labyrinth 
with  its  numerous  little  by-ways  and  dark  pass- 
ages. Better  perhaps  than  in  any  other  work  are 
we  here  led  into  and  through  all  the  capricious 
twists  and  turns  of  the  poet's  versatile  and  way- 
ward subjectivity.  Still  not  planless  by  any  means 
is  the  monstrosity,  even  as  pre-historic  Nature  is 
not,  and  especially  as  pre-historic  Shakespeare  is 
not. 


LOVE'S    LABOB'S    LOST  321 

At  what  point,  then,  may  one  tackle  the  seem- 
ingly recalcitrant  mass  so  as  to  penetrate  the  more 
easily  to  its  order?  It  seems  to  us  that  we  can 
detect  the  play  as  a  composite  of  several  distinct 
stages,  moods,  experiences  of  its  author:  which 
diversity  extends  even  to  a  difference  of  localities. 
These,  as  I  trace  them,  may  be  counted  four — 
Stratford,  London,  Italy,  the  Academe  or  Navarre. 

I.  Stratford.  Many  reminders  we  catch  of  the 
school-boy  in  his  home  town.  So  it  comes  that 
there  is  one  entire  group  which  we  may  call  the 
Stratford  coterie — the  schoolmaster  Holofernes. 
the  curate  Sir  Nathaniel,  and  the  constable  Dull — 
who  are  interwoven  quite  externally  as  a  distinct 
thread  into  the  play.  They  are  portrayed  as  cari- 
catures, each  in  his  own  special  field,  but  all  are 
pedantic,  conceited,  yet  small-minded,  being 
sketched  off  rapidly  with  a  dash  of  grotesquery. 
So  we  have  first  to  catch  the  naughty  boy  Willie 
Shakespeare  in  his  seat  at  school  drawing  satirical 
portraits  of  his  teacher  Holofernes,  obeying  not  so 
much  his  pictorial  as  his  dramatic  impulse,  which 
ip  his  inborn  gift.  And  here  we  have  at  least  a 
reminiscence  of  that  early  skit.  But  who  was  the 
original?  Surely  not  the  London  Italian  Florio, 
as  is  often  said.  Then,  which  one  of  his  three 
Stratford  schoolmasters  sits  now  as  model  ?  He 
cannot  be  definitely  pointed  out;  certainly  it  was 
not  Simon  Hunt,  his  long-time  teacher  and  prob- 
able encourager ;  I  would  vote  for  Thomas  Jenkins, 
his  last  dominie  whom  he  quit  after  a  year's  trial, 


322  SB AKESFE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

doubtless  through  some  trouble  or  dissatisfaction. 
And  Jenkins  himself  lost  his  position  not  long 
afterward.  The  curate  or  preacher  with  his  scrip- 
tural name,  Nathaniel,  also  belonged  to  that  town- 
life,  and  the  petty  official  Dull  represents  its  Dog- 
berrydom,  which  Shakespeare  has  caricatured  else- 
where (see  for  instance  Much  Ado  about  Nothing. 
Undoubtedly  these  three  stock-characters  are  to 
be  found  on  the  stage  long  before  Shakespeare; 
indeed  in  one  form  or  other  they  may  be  picked 
out  in  every  community — English,  French,  Ger- 
man, or  even  old  heathen  Greek,  America  knows 
them  well  in  its  villages;  Abraham  Lincoln's  van- 
ished New  Salem  had  them  without  caricature — the 
schoolmaster  Mentor  Graham  famed  along  with  his 
world-famous  pupil,  the  town  minister,  and  small 
officialdom.  Shakespeare,  the  germinal  dramatist 
of  all  time,  had  experienced  this  special  trio  of 
communal  characters  at  home,  though  they  are  like- 
v/ise  universal  products  of  human  society,  and 
hence  of  its  literature.  It  is  well  to  observe  that 
these  three  Stratfordites  (as  we  may  think  them  for 
the  nonce)  are  marked  off  together  by  themselves 
more  pronouncedly  than  any  other  group  of  the 
play.  They  rise  up  almost  like  a  second  thought  of 
the  author,  since  they  are  not  introduced  into  the 
action  till  it  is  more  than  half  over,  appearing  first 
in  the  Fourth  Act,  Scene  Second.  It  is  true  that 
constable  Dull  has  at  the  start  a  little  piece  of  busi- 
ness, which,  however,  may  be  a  later  interpolation 
At  any  rate  our  Stratford  group  do  not  get  fully 


LOVE'S    LABOR'S    LOST  323 

into  the  movement  of  the  drama  till  the  last  Act,  in 
which  they  occupy  a  pivotal  place  and  perform 
their  real  function.  Why  such  tardy  use  of  them? 
The  answer  involves  a  new  set  of  characters  which 
we  shall  next  consider. 

2.  London.  Only  in  the  capital  city  could  the 
poet  have  met  with  the  second  group  composed  of 
those  foreign  men — Don  Armado,  Moth,  Costard, 
all  of  them  nominally  South  Europeans,  in  contrast 
with  the  pure  English  Stratfordites.  Don  Armado 
is  described  in  the  play  as  '*a  Spaniard  that  keeps 
here  in  court,  a  phantasime  (fantastic),  a  Monar- 
cho",  which  last  epithet  indentifies  him  with  a 
well-known  London  eccentric  of  that  time.  In 
spite  of  chronology  one  cannot  help  putting  him 
alongside  of  Don  Quixote,  Cervantes  being  Shake- 
speare 's  cotemporary.  Don  Armado  is  the  military 
pedant,  and  in  his  way  represents  Spain,  then  the 
first  war-making  nation  of  Europe,  which  threat- 
ened Northern  Protestant  lands,  especially  Holland 
and  England.  Also  his  name  and  character  con- 
nect him  with  the  grandiose  Spanish  Armada 
(often  called  Armado)  whose  huge  bellicose  bubble 
dashed  itself  to  pieces  against  Britain's  ships  and 
rocks  in  the  poet's  time.  Moth,  his  minute  page, 
whose  little  tongue  slashes  so  keenly,  is  supposed 
to  get  his  name  from  the  French  ambassador,  La 
Mothe,  a  familiar  figure  at  Elizabeth  s  court.  Cos- 
tard is  the  French-sounding  numskull,  and  seems 
to  run  on  parallel  lines  of  stupidity  with  Constable 
Dull,  the  dullard  of  the  Stratford  trio.     To  these 


324  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

London  foreigners  must  be  added  the  female  named 
Jaquinetta,  an  unsavory  morsel,  who  could  not  on 
moral  grounds  be  associated  with  those  English  up- 
holders of  the  Church,  School,  and  Law  in  the 
paradisaical  country  town  of  Stratford. 

Much  ingenious  interpretation  has  been  lavished 
upon  Don  Armado,  who  thus  has  shown  the  power 
of  creating  literature  as  well  as  laughter.  His  bom- 
bastic word-puffs,  his  Spanish  Gongorism  or  Eng- 
lish Euphuism,  are  specially  emphasized;  in  him 
Spain 's  native  grandiosity  is  burlesqued  by  its  Eng- 
lish foe,  here  voiced  by  the  dramatist.  Moreover 
this  group  is  introduced  at  the  start  of  the  play  as 
a  kind  of  travesty  and  anti-climax  to  the  somewhat 
monastic  lordly  Academe,  being  parodied  as  the 
obverse  very  realistic  side  to  that  Platonic  idealism. 

But  when  the  poet  proposed  to  give  a  dramatic 
presentation  of  the  Nine  Worthies  as  his  finale,  he 
found  that  the  present  London  group  were  totally 
unfit  for  his  plan;  so  he  brought  into  his  action 
somewhat  abruptly  his  learned  Stratford  group  of 
pedants  to  finish  his  work.  Hence  we  find  two  sets 
of  caricatures  in  his  drama — that  of  pedantic  eru- 
dition and  that  of  pedantic  militarism.  In  both 
groups  our  poet  lets  loose  his  Rabelaisian  humor; 
one  thinks  that  he  at  this  time  must  have  been 
looking  into  the  great  French  caricaturist,  to  whom 
he  alludes  elsewhere.  That  striking  name  Holo- 
fernes  as  well  as  the  character  can  be  traced  back 
to  Gargantuan  Rabelais,  though  Shakespeare  knew 


LOVE'S    LABOB'S    LOST  325 

the  pedant  at  first  hand  in  Stratford.     He  must 
experience  before  he  appropriates. 

3.  Italy.  Permeating  this  drama  everywhere  is 
felt  a  strong  Italian  influence,  though  there  be  in  it 
no  national  representative  of  Italy.  In  fact  its 
v/hole  argument  plays  around  the  Italian  Rena- 
scence in  several  of  its  phases,  indicating  how  it 
affected  Southern  Europe  as  well  as  far  away 
Northern  England,  and  especially  the  renascent 
English  poet  Shakespeare.  Already  we  have  seen 
him  satirize  in  this  play  its  negative  side  of  hollow 
pedantry ;  but  he  will  also  manifest  its  positive  side, 
particularly  in  its  poetic  overflow. 

In  fact  we  may  hear  a  personal  undertone  of  the 
poet's  own  experience  in  his  admiration  of  Venice 
whose  proverbial  praise  he  cites  in  the  original  (as 
corrected  by  Theobald)  :  Vinegia,  Vinegia,  chi  non 
te  vede,  ei  non  te  pregia.  0  Venice,  0  Venice,  who 
Jias  not  seen  thee,  prizes  thee  not.  A  little  exuber- 
ance of  Shakespeare's  own  heart  as  he  recalls  the 
Italian  sea-city  we  may  well  note  here,  being  a  kind 
of  prelude  to  what  he  will  do  with  it  in  Merchant  of 
Venice  and  in  Othello,  and  possibly  in  Measure  for 
Measure,  whose  Vienna  seems  at  some  points  to  be  a 
sort  of  mask  for  Venice.  For  in  these  three  future 
plays  he  appears  to  commune  directly  with  the  in- 
most Venetian  city-soul,  and  to  re-create  its  pe- 
culiar atmosphere  in  speech,  which  could  hardly  be 
achieved  except  by  immediate  personal  vision  and 
appropriation.    Do  we  not  go  to  Shakespeare  still 


326  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

to  catch  the  spirit  of  Venice  in  words,  as  we  seek 
its  expression  in  color  by  viewing  the  works  of 
Titian  and  of  Tintoretto,  and  of  her  other  great 
painters  ?  And  is  it  pushing  too  far  when  we  think 
to  hearken  in  his  foregoing  praise  of  Venice  the 
poet's  own  confession,  that  he  must  directly  and 
sensibly  see  the  wonderful  city  in  order  to  appre- 
ciate and  then  reproduce  its  elusive  soul-life? 
Surely  he  has  first  to  experience  Venice  before  he 
can  realize  it  dramatically — which  means  the  trip 
to  Italy. 

But  that  which  chiefly  conjoins  Shakespeare  to 
Italy  is  the  poetry  of  the  Italian  Renascence,  with 
its  love  rhymes,  and  especially  with  its  sonnets,  of 
which  a  number  are  interspersed  throughout  the 
present  action.  So  it  comes  that  the  work  before 
us  specially  interlinks  with  the  total  Shakespearian 
sonnet-sequence  far  more  deeply  than  any  other 
play ;  in  fact  this  Italian  strain  of  it  has  a  tendency 
to  pitch  over  into  mere  sonneting  at  various  points. 
Still  it  represents  only  one  phase  or  period  of  all 
the  sonnets,  which  are  a  kind  of  diary  of  Shake- 
speare's whole  poetic  career.  For  his  sonnets  mir- 
ror the  personal  counterpart  of  the  comic,  tragic, 
and  redemptive  stages  of  his  entire  Life-drama. 
Also  the  Dark  Lady  now  definitely  appears — the 
real  heroine  of  the  Sonneteer,  though  there  may 
be  besides  her  two  or  three  lesser  female  person- 
alities. 

4.  Navarre,  or  The  Academe.  For  some  reason 
the  poet  now  shuns  local   Italy,  in  spite  of  the 


LOVE'S    LABOE'S    LOST  327 

play's  Italianized  poetry,  culture,  and  general  at- 
mosphere, and  he  throws  his  scene  into  Navarre 
which  is  situated  chiefly  in  the  South  of  France 
and  extends  into  Spain.  We  might  think  him 
dallying  over  the  old  Provencal  love-world  with  its 
troubadours,  but  it  can  hardly  be  dug  out  of  any 
intimations  here.  Accordingly  we  may  suppose 
that  the  poet  took  a  dramatic  advantage  of  the 
great  English  interest  in  Henry  IV,  King  of  Na- 
.  varre,  and  the  Protestant  hero  of  France,  who  won 
the  battle  of  Ivry  in  1590  over  his  Catholic  foes, 
and  whose  name  and  deed  are  still  known  and  de- 
claimed by  the  school-boys  of  Anglo- Saxondom, 
rehearsing  young  Macaulay's  spirited  verses: 

Now  glory  to  the  Lord  of  Hosts  from  whom 

all  glories  are     .... 
Hurrah !  hurrah !  for  Ivry  and  King  Henry 

of  Navarre. 

Queen  Elizabeth  is  said  to  have  sent  4000  soldiers 
to  help  the  Protestant  French  king,  who  three  years 
later  turned  Catholic  (1593)  about  the  time  of 
Shakespeare's  visit  to  Italy,  probably  by  way  of 
France  and  possibly  of  Navarre.  But  the  poet 
avoids  any  notice  of  the  religious  conflict,  in  ac- 
cord with  his  habit  of  shunning  the  great  Catholic- 
Protestant  strife  of  the  age,  with  two  or  three  pos- 
sible exceptions.  On  the  contrary  he  makes  his 
theme  wholly  secular  and  cultural.  Says  the  King 
here: 


328  SHAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

Navarre  shall  be  the  wonder  of  the  world, 
Our  court  shall  be  a  little  Academe, 
Still  and  contemplative  in  living  art. 

The  answer  of  one  of  these  associated  philosophers 
may  be  taken  as  typical  of  all  of  them : 

To  love,  to  wealth,  to  pomp,  I  pine  and  die, 
With  all  these  living  in  philosophy. 

Religion  thus  has  no  direct  part  in  this  "New 
Life ' ',  which  hints  a  prevalent  dream  of  the  Renas- 
cence to  re-establish  the  old  Platonic  School  of 
Athens,  whereof  an  example  was  famously  given  by 
the  Florentine  Academy  established  about  1540, 
and  much  reputed  at  the  time  of  Shakespeare's 
visit  to  Italy.  The  dream  of  the  King  of  Navarre 
is  to  turn  his  state  into  a  kind  of  Platonopolis,  an 
institution  which  the  philosopher  Plotinus  once 
thought  of  creating  as  the  realisation  of  Plato's 
ideal  Republic,  and  which  was  to  be  ruled  by  phi- 
losophers. Here  we  may  add  that  Shakespeare 
shows  his  Platonic  bent  and  study  in  a  number  of 
sonnets,  for  Platonism  was  a  learned  fashion  or 
freak  of  the  time,  also  chiefly  imported  from  Italy. 
In  fact  the  claim  has  been  made  that  our  poet 
somehow  got  tinctured  with  the  philosophy  of 
Giordano  Bruno,  who  was  burned  for  heresy  in 
1600  at  Rome. 

From  this  point  of  view  Love's  Labor's  Lost  gives 
many  interesting  glimpses  of  Shakepeare's  eager 
learnings  and  imaginings  during  the  present  Epoch. 


LOVE'S    LABOR'S    LOST  329 

Nor  does  he  fail  to  acknowledge  his  deeper  motive 
as  voiced  by  the  King : 

Let  fame,  that  all  hunt  after  in  their  lives 
Live  registered  upon  our  brazen  tombs    .    .    . 
And  make  us  heirs  of  all  eternity. 

But  now  appears  a  mightier  power  than  Lore,  even 
than  Fame  the  eternizer,  namely  Love,  most  beau- 
tifully and  indeed  irresistibly  incorporate  in  the 
Princess  of  France  and  her  three  grand  Ladies, 
who  proceed  at  once  to  storm  and  to  capture  the 
celibate  fortress  of  Philosophy,  whose  once  defiant 
inmates  they  subject  to  their  loveless  ordinances. 

Let  it  also  be  noted  that  here  Shakespeare  shad- 
ows forth  his  own  experience,  for  all  through  his 
Italianizing  sonnets  and  dramas  and  epics  runs  the 
over-mastering  might  of  Love.  And  the  Renascence 
as  a  whole,  with  all  its  erudite  classicism  and  phi- 
losophy, utters  its  deepest  and  realest  self  in  the 
amatory  strains  of  its  poets  and  novelists;  over- 
much religion  it  was  not  afflicted  with.  The  World - 
Spirit  then  indwelling  Italy  was  in  love;  Shake- 
speare's genius,  originally  love's  own,  became  im- 
pregnated with  its  Italian  expression  there,  and 
brought  the  same  home  to  his  England. 

We  feel  more  reconciled  to  the  hodge-podge  of 
Lovers  Labor's  Lost,  when  we  find  that  its  scat- 
tered dramatic  protoplasm  contains  a  greater  num- 
ber of  germs  of  the  coming  Shakespeare  than  any 
other  drama  under  his  name.  It  overspans  a  large 
fragment  of  his  early  creative  life,  being  almost  a 


330  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

complete  treatise  of  Shakespearian  embryology. 
To  discern  these  motes,  you  have  to  use  your  mi- 
croscope, and  furthermore  to  put  in  order  their 
atomic  sport ;  if  you  are  averse  to  that  instrument, 
as  many  are,  you  had  better  leave  this  play  to  one 
side.  It  has  a  unique  bent  of  turning  to  a  sonnet- 
drama,  and  therein  connects  with  the  poet's  long 
sonnet-sequence,  and  also  with  A  Lover's  Com- 
plaint, as  already  noticed.  His  delight  in  Italy, 
especially  in  Venice  is  marked;  at  the  same  time 
his  passion  breaks  out  for  the  Dark  Lady,  whose 
name  is  here  Rosaline,  whom  he  also  glimpsed  in 
Romeo  and  Juliet.  Quite  similar  are  these  two 
portraits  in  a  number  of  features,  especially  in 
beauty's  haughty  disdain  for  her  lover,  be  he 
Eomeo,  or  Biron,  or  Shakespeare,  or  all  three  in 
one.  A  great  evolution  lies  in  this  love  of  Rosaline 
as  it  keeps  unfolding  and  expressing  itself  in  the 
poet's  Life-drama,  whose  other  side  or  subjective 
underworld  it  reveals,  sometimes  sunlit,  oftener 
clouded. 

It  is  reasonable  to  infer  that  Shakespeare  re- 
garded this  singular  work  of  his  pen  with  a  per- 
sonal favor,  since  he  took  the  trouble  to  make  a 
** newly  corrected  and  augmented"  copy  of  it  for 
the  printer :  such  is  the  fact  indicated  on  the  title- 
page  of  the  Quarto  published  in  1598.  In  like 
manner  it  is  stated  that  the  Quarto  of  Romeo  and 
Juliet  was  '*  newly  corrected,  augmented  and 
amended"  for  publication  the  next  year,  1599. 
Still  further,  the  second  Quarto  of  Hamlet  (1604) 


LOVE'S    LABOR'S    LOST  331 

is  also  '*  newly  imprinted  and  enlarged  to  almost  as 
much  again  as  it  was".  These  three  documented 
facts  cause  us  to  infer  that  Shakespeare  has  won 
his  reading-public,  and  does  not  propose  to  confine 
his  genius  to  the  play-house.  The  test  has  been 
fully  made;  his  vaster  constituency  of  readers  has 
already  risen  upon  his  outlook. 

Over  and  over  again  in  this  play,  as  well  as  else- 
where the  poet  has  suggested  his  own  psychology 
and  poetic  first  principle:  the  immediate  experi- 
ence of  the  object,  while  erudition  or  transmitted 
lore  is  but  an  aid  at  best : 

Learning  is  but  an  adjunct  to  ourself 
And  where  we  are,  our  learning  likewise  is : 

In  fact  Lovers  Labor's  Lost  often  vents  a  strong 
reaction  against  the  crammed  traditional  education 
in  favor  of  the  original  spontaneous  self,  which  is 
here  manifested  in  youth's  primordial  love  of 
woman : 

From  woman's  eyes  this  doctrine  I  derive 
They  are  the  ground,  the  books,  the  Academes, 
From  whence  doth  spring  the  true  Promethean 
fire, 

that  is,  the  fire  of  creation,  especially  the  poetic, 
re-enacting  that  story  of  old  Prometheus,  the  man- 
former  : 

Never  durst  poet  touch  a  pen  to  write 

Until  his  ink  were  tempered  with  Love 's  sighs. 


332  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

Thus  Shakespeare  as  Biron  cenfesses  all  the  varie- 
ties and  tortuosities  of  his  new  experience,  giving 
quite  a  full  psychology  of  his  Ego,  now  under  the 
goad  of  his  true  Promethean  love  which  will  drive 
him  to  a  fresh  world-creation. 

Schoolmaster  Holof ernes  does  not  like  the  new- 
fangled Italian  poetry,  so  he  is  introduced  criticiz- 
ing the  sonnet  and  belittling  its  worth  in  compari- 
son with  the  grand  classic  example  glorified  in  his 
shout  of  admiration:  ''Ovidius  Naso  was  the 
man'^,  and  not  your  Italy's  poetasters;  that  is, 
Ovid  was  the  poetic  darling  of  the  Stratford 
School.  Such  is  the  pre-Italian  note  of  the  old 
pedagogue,  whose  limited  lore  young  Shakespeare 
shows  himself  to  have  far  transcended  in  the  pres- 
ent drama. 

III.  Histories  of  the  Present  Epoch.  We  have 
now  reached  the  national  portion  of  the  Shake- 
spearian Pan-drama,  those  plays  listed  simply  as 
Histories  in  the  First  Folio,  ten  of  them  as  there 
«et  down.  This  dramatic  form  is  in  origin  the  most 
English  of  all  the  work  of  Shakespeare,  who  here 
dramatizes  the  History  of  his  nation  after  a  model 
which  his  nation  has  evolved,  and  which  he  carries 
up  to  the  highest  perfection.  Thus  he  found  it 
already  existent  but  germinal,  and  he  fulfilled  it 
with  his  genius. 

The  two  preceding  kinds  of  drama  are  not  of 
English  descent  either  in  form  or  matter ;  Tragedy 
and  Comedy  go  back  to  the  old  classic  world  for 
their  starting-point  in  Shakespeare,  however  much 


LOVE'S    LABOB'S    LOST  333 

they  get  transformed  under  his  hand.  Hence  they 
are  far  more  imitated  or  derived  from  the  outside 
than  his  History,  which  both  in  form  and  content 
is  native  to  the  English  soil,  even  if  hints  of  it 
may  be  found  in  antiquity.  So  we  behold  the  poet 
even  in  this  far-outreaching  experimental  Epoch 
cling  to  his  own  folk's  art-form. 

Moreover  his  present  stage  of  writing  poetic  His- 
tory simply  continues  what  he  has  begun  in  his 
Collaborative  Epoch,  the  time  of  his  Yorkian 
Tetralogy,  which  has  been  already  set  forth  as  the 
beginning  of  his  dramatic  authorship.  Indeed  his 
experience  with  that  stormily  tragic  age  of  the 
Roses  made  him  go  back  and  dramatize  its  earliest 
source,  in  the  reign  of  Richard  II.  The  poet  now 
becomes  the  patriot,  voicing  his  people's  deepest 
political  consciousness,  and  composing  what  has 
been  called  the  grand  dramatic  Epos  of  English 
nationality. 

Of  these  Histories  we  conceive  two.  King  John 
and  Richard  II,  to  have  been  composed  during  the 
present  Epoch.  Again  there  is  no  exact  proof  for 
the  dates  of  these  plays,  and  hence  comes  great 
diversity  of  critical  opinion  upon  this  subject.  In 
this  chronological  chaos  we  discern  a  single  steady 
light-point:  one  of  these  Histories,  King  John, 
shows  itself  written  before  Shakespeare's  visit  to 
Italy,  hence  we  may  rank  it  as  pre-Italian;  while 
the  other,  Richard  II,  has  not  a  few  marks  of  Italy's 
influence  upon  the  poet. 


334  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

KING  JOHN. 

Some  commentators  place  the  birth  of  Shake- 
speare's King  John,  after  that  of  his  Richard  II, 
without  proof  or  good  reason  we  think;  besides, 
such  an  order  violates  the  historic  time-sequence 
of  the  two  plays.  But  the  deeper  ground  is  that 
King  John,  in  subject  and  in  style,  in  wording  and 
especially  in  English  patriotism,  is  closely  related 
to  the  poet's  earlier  Histories,  the  Yorkian  group. 
Still  further,  one  who  listens  intently,  can  still 
hear  in  it  the  buoyant  echoes  of  Queen  Elizabeth's 
recent  triumph  over  Spain,  and  the  national  glorifi- 
cation after  the  defeat  of  the  Spanish  Armada — a 
mood  which  cannot  be  discerned  in  the  previous 
four  Histories. 

Hence  it  comes  that  we  feel  in  this  play  a  lurking 
antagonism  to  the  Southern  or  Latin  world,  espe- 
cially as  regards  its  two  institutions.  Church  and 
State.  England  has  rejected  both,  even  with  sword 
in  hand,  and  her  poet  now  celebrates  the  great  in- 
stitutional separation  of  Anglo-Saxondom  from  the 
Mediterranean  system  both  ecclesiastical  and  po- 
litical— the  consummation  of  Elizabeth's  reign. 
Hence  we  assign  this  drama  to  Shakespeare's  pre- 
Italian  time  and  mood,  from  which  we  shall  find 
him  strongly  re-acting  after  his  visit  to  Italy. 

Such  is  the  spirit  of  the  present  play,  which  we 
may  hearken  in  the  words  of  its  English  hero  Fal- 
conbridge,  especially  when  he  ridicules  the  foreign 
traveler  as  ''my  picked  man  of  countries" 


KING    JOHN  335 

And  talking  of  the  Alps  and  Appenines, 
The  Pyrenean  and  the  river  Po. 

With  like  purpose,  though  with  a  different  manner, 
the  King  himself  (John)  in  his  earlier  more  Eng- 
lish period  denounces  the  ' '  Italian  priest ' '  in  Eng- 
land, and  even  defies  the  Church's  head 

Yet  I  alone,  alone  do  me  oppose 
Against  the  Pope,  and  count  his  friends  my 
foes — 

which  challenge  was  certainly  Elizabeth's,  if  not 
John 's.  Later  we  shall  find  Shakespeare  modifying 
his  tone,  particularly  about  travel,  after  that  he 
has  himself  been  a  traveler  in  Italy.  His  praise 
of  it  we  have  already  quoted  in  The  Two  Gentle- 
men of  Verona,  a  production  of  his  post-Italian 
time. 

King  John  Bull  this  play  might  be  sur-named, 
for  it  is  more  rampantly  patriotic,  more  Anglo- 
maniacal  than  any  other  work  of  Shakespeare, 
though  most  of  his  Histories  are  strongly  relished 
with  Englishism.  That  does  not  hurt  them,  to  our 
taste ;  rather  is  it  just  what  we  should  expect  and 
even  wish  for  in  the  present  dramatic  species.  Ac- 
cordingly in  this  play,  which  voices  the  prologue 
chronological  of  the  poet 's  grand  English-historical 
Pan-drama  consisting  of  the  ten  dramas  or  so- 
called  Histories  from  King  John  to  Henry  VIII 
inclusive,  we  hear  the  key-note  loudly  and  per- 
vasively intoned,  namely  nationalism  and  just 
about  the  Englishest  nationalism  possible. 


336  SB AKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

Now  it  is  of  significance  to  note  that  our  poet 
has  had  to  evolve  into  this  intensity  of  national 
feeling  through  his  art.  The  composition  of  the 
Yorkian  Tetralogy  lies  already  behind  him  (Rich- 
ard III  and  the  three  Parts  of  Henry  VI)  as  has 
been  just  set  forth.  Hence  in  the  line  of  his  own 
dramatic  evolution,  King  John  is  his  fifth  and  pos- 
sibly his  seventh  effort  in  the  production  of  English 
Histories,  and  thus  touches  the  center  of  the  entire 
series.  But  it  is  placed  first  according  to  the  strict 
chronological  succession,  which  is  the  order  of  the 
First  Folio  and  of  nearly  all  editions  printed  since. 
On  account  of  this  earliest  arrangement,  which  de- 
rives doubtless  from  Shakespeare  himself,  he  must 
have  regarded  the  ten  dramas  of  English  History  as 
one  great  artistic  Whole,  the  supreme  oblation  of 
his  genius  to  his  country.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
the  Shakespearian  Life-drama,  which  is  now  our 
theme  emphatically  pushed  to  the  fore.  King  John 
is  interlinked  in  the  dramatic  chain  after  Richard 
III,  and  betrays  still  an  imitative  undertone  of  the 
master,  Marlowe.  Looking  backward  as  well  as 
peering  forward,  the  poet  has  here  reached  a  dis- 
tinct conscious  conception  of  his  English  Historical 
Series,  which  is,  of  course,  still  to  be  wrought  out 
to  its  completeness  in  his  future  years  by  the  addi- 
tion of  five  more  of  these  Histories. 

Accordingly  in  the  present  drama  he  has  intro- 
duced a  character  whose  chief  function  is  to  pro- 
claim the  new  national  spirit,  which  really  belongs 
not  so  much  to  King  John's  old  time  nearly  four 


KING    JOHN  337 

centuries  agone,  as  to  Queen  Elizabeth's,  just  now 
being  houred  on  the  horologue  of  History.  This  is 
Faleonbridge  whose  closing  speech  of  the  play 
might  be  taken  as  the  motto  for  it  at  the  start  as 
well  as  for  the  whole  English-historical  series: 

This  England  never  did  nor  never  shall 

Lie  at  the  proud  foot  of  a  conqueror 

But  when  it  first  did  help  to  wound  itself. 

These  lines  suggest  the  difference  between  the  two 
Englands — the  former  humiliated,  self-wounding 
England,  of  the  warring  Koses,  and  the  present 
united,  exalted  England  now  gloriously  triumphant 
over  the  Spanish  Armada,  which  also  menaced  both 
State  and  Religion.  Accordingly  the  poet  intro- 
duces and  stresses  the  attack  on  the  independence 
of  the  English  Nation  and  Church,  not  from  Spain, 
indeed,  but  from  France,  another  Latin  people 
supported  by  the  Papacy.  Still  the  inner  national 
conflict  of  King  John  was  the  same  as  that  of  the 
poet's  age,  and  his  Elizabethan  audience  could  not 
help  responding  to  this  conflict  as  its  own  recent 
battle. 

Moreover  Shakespeare  had  passed  through  what 
he  here  describes.  The  Queen  was  excommuni- 
cated by  the  Pope,  conspirators  had  sought  to 
assassinate  her  at  home,  foreign  nations  threatened 
her  crown  from  abroad,  religious  disputes  kept  wax- 
ing hotter  throughout  her  realm.  The  English 
folk-soul  was  in  mighty  turmoil  and  upheaval  from 
its  depths:    it  was  digging  up  and  revaluing  its 


338  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

old  transmitted  institutions,  especially  those  of 
government  and  religion.  This  younger  experience 
of  his  the  poet  has  set  forth  in  those  deeply  turbu- 
lent plays  of  national  unrest,  which  make  up  his 
Henry  VI,  whose  violent  form  reflects  their  violent 
time  as  well  as  their  violent  characters.  But  also 
they  hold  the  mirror  up  to  the  earlier  years  of 
Elizabeth 's  reign,  whereof  Shakespeare  had  experi- 
enced somewhat,  making  him  feel  profoundly  the 
national  bane  of  all  these  dynastic  strifes.  In  fact 
Shakespeare-Falconbridge  in  a  lofty  flight  of  rap- 
ture seems  to  prophesy  the  ultimate  decline  and 
cessation  of  royalty  itself  through  its  own  inherent 
self-destruction.  In  these  our  days  of  sunken  ma- 
jesties the  passage  stirs  wonderment : 

Now  for  the  bare-picked  bone  of  majesty 
Doth  dogged  war  bristle  his  angry  crest, 
And  snarleth  in  the  gentle  eyes  of  peace; 
Now  powers  from  home  and  discontents  at  home 
Meet  in  one  line ;  and  vast  confusion  waits. 
As  doth  a  raven  on  a  sick  fallen  beast. 
The  imminent  decay  of  wrested  pomp. 

Some  such  fulfilment  we  have  just  witnessed  to- 
day through  Europe's  World-War.  But  thus  at 
the  end  of  his  Fourth  Act  our  poet-prophet  in  far- 
off  foreboding  broods  over  the  fall  of  kingship. 
Mark  now  the  sudden  change:  in  the  following 
Fifth  Act  a  new  spirit  rises  and  speaks  through 
Faulconbridge : 


KING    JOHN  339 

But  wherefore  do  you  droop  ?  why  look  you  sad  ? 
Let  not  the  world  see  fear  and  sad  distrust 
Govern  the  motion  of  a  kingly  eye — 
Be  great  in  act — be  stirring  as  the  time — 
The  dauntless  spirit  of  resolution. 

In  these  words  we  may  well  hear  the  voice  of  the 
rising  national  will  which  is  to  make  no  compro- 
mise, no  ''base  truce  to  arms  invasive"  like  those 
of  Spain.  Old  King  John  can  now  be  ' '  poisoned  by 
a  monk"  and  gotten  out  of  the  way,  for  the  new 
King  John  Bull  is  in  the  saddle  personated  hy 
Faulconbridge.  And  the  English  people  under 
Elizabeth  has  made  the  transition  from  a  time  of 
inner  scission  and  distraction  to  a  time  of  national 
unity  and  of  fresh  creative  power,  now  uttered  by 
Shakespeare,  its  greatest  incarnation. 

Such  is,  to  our  feeling,  the  dominant  personal 
note  in  the  present  play,  the  poet's  high-wrought 
paean  celebrating  his  nation's  victory  over  the 
Southern  or  the  Latin  assault  upon  the  rising 
Anglo-Saxon  world  in  the  North.  Somewhat  of  this 
oldest  and  deepest  European  struggle,  that  orig- 
inally between  Roma  and  Teutonia,  sends  an  occa- 
sional underbreath,  which  may  be  heard  in  the 
defiance : 

from  the  mouth  of  England 
Add  this  much  more — that  no  Italian  priest 
Shall  tithe  or  toll  in  our  dominions. 

There  is  another  very  intimate  gush  from  Shake- 
speare's  own  heart  in  this  play:    the  lament  of 


340  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

Constance  the  mother  over  the  loss  of  her  son's 
future  prospect  of  greatness.  The  youth  Shake- 
speare, when  he  married  Anne  Hathaway,  must 
have  heard  similar  words  from  his  proud,  soul- 
stricken  mother  so  ambitious  for  her  boy  whose 
considerate  but  anxious  answer  we  may  catch  in 
that  of  Arthur : 

I  do  beseech  you,  Madam,  be  content. 

The  maternal  pride  of  Mary  Arden  Shakespeare  in 
its  deep  disappointment  may  have  been  capable  of 
suggesting  even  the  passionate  words  of  Constance 
over  her  son : 

But  thou  art  fair,  and  at  thy  birth,  dear  boy. 
Nature  and  Fortune  joined  to  make  thee  great ; 
Of  Nature's  gifts  thou  mayst  with  lilies  boast 
And  with  the  half -blown  rose.    But  Fortune,  0 
She  is  corrupted,  changed  and  won  from  thee — 

Of  course  the  outer  events  in  the  two  eases  do  not 
tally,  but  the  inner  flow  of  the  mother-soul  is  quite 
the  same  in  kind,  being  caused  by  a  like  defeat  of 
lofty  maternal  hope.  Constance  is  indeed  a  char- 
acter which  distinctly  lies  outside  and  beyond  the 
range  of  Marlowe  both  in  conception  and  utterance, 
even  when  she  uses  her  strongest  power-words,  as 

0  that  my  tongue  were  in  the  thunder's  mouth, 
Then  with  a  passion  I  would  shake  the  world. 

Still  there  are  some  passages  in  this  play  where 
we  can  detect  the  influence  of  the  poet*s  great 


KING    JOHN  341 

teacher.  Even  the  child  Arthur  mid  his  most  af- 
fecting prattle  mounts  now  and  then  into  the  high 
stilts  of  Marlowese,  as  when  he  speaks  of  the  hot 
iron  which  is  to  burn  out  his  eyes  **in  this  iron 
age": 

The  iron  of  itself  though  heat  red-hot, 
Approaching  near  these  eyes,  would  drink 

my  tears 
And  quench  his  fiery  indignation 
Even  in  the  matter  of  mine  innocence. 
Nay,  after  that  consume  away  in  rust — 

which  would  sound  very  maturely  bombastic  and 
subtly  far-fetched  in  a  full-grown  man.  In  fact 
Hubert's  talk  is  simpler  and  more  child-like  than 
Arthur's  in  this  famous  scene,  whose  overwhelm- 
ing dramatic  power  Shakespeare  derived  from  the 
old  play  which  he  appropriated  and  transfigured, 
as  usual.  This  old  play  was  named  ' '  The  Trouble- 
some Raigne  of  John,  King  of  England'*,  and  was 
printed  in  1591,  which  year  is  not  far  from  the 
date  of  its  reconstruction  by  Shakespeare,  who 
must  have  known  it  before  as  a  stage-piece,  and 
have  ruminated  over  its  fresh  redaction  in  accord 
with  his  new  poetic  principle.  Shakespeare's  own 
play  of  King  John  was  not  published  till  the  Folio 
of  1623,  where  it  stands  first  of  the  second  division 
entitled  Histories,  to  which  it  was  evidently  con- 
ceived as  the  overture.  Thus  the  time  of  its  com- 
position is  purely  conjectural,  and  has  been  varied 
much  by  various  expositors  for  a  variety  of  rea- 


342  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

sons.  A  number  of  writers  headed  by  Richard 
Grant  White  have  fixed  on  the  year  1596,  m  order 
to  make  the  date  of  the  play  cotemporaneous  with 
the  death  of  the  poet's  young  son  Hamnet,  for 
whom  the  bereaved  mother  Constance's  heart- 
rending lamentations  are  supposed  to  be  the 
father 's  own  for  his  dead  boy : 

Therefore  never,  never,  never 
Must  I  behold  my  pretty  Arthur  more — 
Grief  fills  the  room  up  of  my  absent  child, 
Lies  in  his  bed,  walks  up  and  down  with  me, 
Puts  on  his  pretty  looks,  repeats  his  works, 
Remembers  me  of  all  his  gracious  parts, 
Stuffs  out  his  vacant  garments  with  his  form : 

all  of  which  throbs  straight  from  personal  experi- 
ence and  may  have  been  a  later  insertion.  But  the 
drift  of  the  play  as  a  whole  reaches  back  to  the 
early  nineties  of  the  sixteenth  century,  years  be- 
fore the  passing  of  Hamnet,  and  is  certainly  not 
attuned  in  its  fundamental  keynote  to  a  dirge  of 
domestic  sorrow. 

The  frequent  military  and  naval  terms  seem  to 
waft  a  recent  reminiscence  of  war  through  the 
drama.  Who  can  even  to-day  help  thinking  of  the 
defeat  of  the  Armada  in  this  piece  of  news  brought 
by  a  messenger  of  the  King : 

Be  of  good  comfort,  for  the  great  supply 
That  was  expected  by  the  Dauphin  here 
Are  wrecked  three  nights  ago  on  Goodwin 
S^nds — 


KING    JOHN  343 

where  part  of  the  Spanish  fleet  perished  in  a  storm. 
Only  some  few  years  before  this  play's  time,  Wil- 
liam Shakespeare  must  have  heard  a  similar  an- 
nouncement made  to  the  people  of  England,  which 
still  has  its  appeal  to  Anglo-Saxondom, 

The  underlying  theme  of  the  drama  we  thus  in- 
terweave with  .the  poet 's  own  time  and  life.  Two 
characters  especially,  Faulconbridge  and  Constance 
are  deeply  tinged  with  his  personal  experience  and 
receive  direct  draughts  from  his  purest  effluence  of 
genius.  With  this  finest  gold  is  mingled  a  good 
deal  of  foreign  material  not  yet  fully  fused  into  his 
art-work ;  no  little  formalism,  imitation,  undigested 
tradition  still  muddies  the  crystal  stream  of  his 
originality.  Nevertheless  we  can  see  the  distinctive 
Shakespeare  here  as  the  right  dramatist,  as  the 
masker  and  incarnator  of  his  own  innermost  Self 
into  divers  acting  individualities. 

Still  to-day,  looking  back  at  the  recent  World- 
War,  we  may  hear  throughout  this  play  the  pro- 
phetic note  which  rings  so  resolutely  in  the  will- 
fraught  lines: 

This  England  never  did  nor  never  shall 
Lie  at  the  proud  foot  of  a  conqueror. 

Such  was  the  poet 's  rapturous  forecast  of  his  coun- 
try uttered  more  than  three  centuries  ago;  but  in 
these  last  years  a  far  more  desperate  trial  England 
has  undergone  than  that  of  those  old  wars — French 
and  Spanish — with  the  same  final  victorious  out- 
come, however.     Hence  this  drama  of  King  John 


344  SHAKESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

has  for  to-day's  reader  a  strangely  new  presaging 
voice  , which  our  time  hearkens  out  of  it  every- 
where. Yet  with  one  astonishing  change:  her  foe 
is  not  now  the  South  but  the  North,  not  the  Latin 
but  the  German,  not  Roma  but  Teutonia.  A  grand 
new  shifting  scene  of  the  World's  History:  what 
can  it  mean? 

But  in  the  life  of  the  poet  behold  the  sudden 
metamorphosis !  Watch  him  as  he  attunes  himself 
anew,  turning  from  his  strongly  Anglicised  to  his 
sweetly  Italianized  strain,  not  only  in  his  one  drama 
but  in  his  Life-drama. 

KING  RICHARD  II. 

Here  is  not  only  the  right  chronological,  but  the 
fitting  biographical  place  of  the  present  play,  which 
along  with  King  John  represents  two  successive 
phases  of  the  poet's  biography — phases  which  ap- 
pertain to  this  same  second  Epoch,  imitative,  tenta- 
tive, limit-overreaching.  Shakespeare  still  follows 
the  transmitted  model  of  the  English  History  dra- 
matized, the  present  being  his  sixth  (possibly  his 
eighth)  attempt  in  this  species.  And  we  still  trace 
the  influence  of  his  master  Marlowe  at  several  dif- 
ferent points,  one  of  which  we  may  here  premise: 
probably  Marlowe's  last  play  is  his  Edward  II,  in 
rivalry  with  which  Shakespeare  from  certain  sim- 
ilarities seems  to  have  composed  his  Richard  II. 

Still  for  us  the  distinctive  literary  fact  of  this 
present  play  is  its  Italian  mood,  feeling,   poetic 


KING    BICHABD  345 

fragrance;  its  style  is  softer,  sweeter,  weaker  than 
that  of  King  John,  which  has  in  it,  especially  in  the 
first  half,  a  right  strong  display  of  English  will- 
power and  word-energy.  Accordingly  Shakespeare 
interweaves  here  a  strain  of  his  spirit's  Italy,  and 
Richard  II  Italianizes  himself  in  the  course  of  the 
drama  through  his  peculiar  artistic  temperament. 
Although  on  the  throne  of  England,  he  appears 
like  one  of  those  petty  Italian  tyrants  of  the  Rena- 
scence, ready  to  assassinate  his  own  kin  by  hired 
dagger  or  secret  poison,  ruled  by  his  favorites,  and 
utterly  regardless  of  all  private  and  public  right. 
Still  such  a  tyrant  could  be  and  often  was  a  de- 
voted patron  of  the  Fine  Arts,  in  which  Italy  was 
supreme;  yea,  he  could  be  an  artist  also  as  well  as 
a  right  artistic  object  in  himself.  Some  such  crea- 
ture seems  to  us  this  King  Richard,  a  beautiful 
youth  always  in  the  play,  however  old  he  may  be; 
often  a  tender  emotional  soul  interlaid  with  streaks 
of  remorseless  cruelty.  But  especially  was  he  en- 
dowed with  an  unique  poetic  gift  which  radiates 
shining  verses  like  sunbeams  from  old  Sol,  corus- 
cating the  brighter  as  he  sinks  toward  his  setting. 

What  could  have  turned  Shakespeare  to  portray- 
ing such  a  character,  quite  singular  among  all  his 
dramatic  personages?  We  believe  that  it  is  one  of 
the  fruits  of  his  Italian  journey,  a  dramatic  picture 
drawn  from  his  immediate  observation  of  the  fact 
at  first  hand.  For  Richard  II  is  not  a  thorough- 
bred Englishman,  though  he  be  here  Englished  by 
the  English  poet  who,  however,  has  the  creative 


346  SHAKE SPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

power  of  transfiguring  his  own  particular  form  of 
nationalism  into  quite  its  opposite.  It  is  true  that 
very  little  is  said  about  Italy  in  this  drama.  Still 
that  old-timer  York  vents  his  complaints  against 
the  King's  un-English  love  of  foreign  manners,  art, 
and  poetry;  lamenting  that  Richard  is  altogether 
too  fond  of 

Lascivious  meters,  to  whose  venom  sound 
The  open  ear  of  youth  doth  always  listen ; 
Report  of  fashions  in  proud  Italy 
Whose  manners  still  our  tardy-apish  nation 
Limps  after  in  base  imitation. 

Here  the  open  charge  is  that  Richard  is  Italianiz- 
ing, against  which  tendency  has  evidently  risen  a 
strong  national  protest,  which  Shakespeare  has 
heard  and  here  expresses. 

One  void  in  Richard 's  soul  is  specially  noticeable : 
it  is  his  total  lack  of  conscience  which  is  so  prom- 
inent in  other  plays,  markedly  in  Richard  III.  No 
contrition,  no  repentance,  no  reaction  of  the  spirit 
against  his  guilty  deeds  can  we  trace  in  Richard  II. 
When  told  that  he  must  confess  ''the  grievous 
crimes  committed  by  your  person  and  your  fol- 
lowers", he  questions  ''must  I  do  so?  and  must  I 
ravel  out  my  weaved-up  follies?"  He  refuses,  de- 
fends himself,  showing  that  confession  is  not  a  part 
of  his  make-up,  that  he  really  lacks  the  sense  of 
guilt,  that  he  as  annointed  king  can  do  no  wrong. 
One  can  hardly  help  thinking  of  Machiavelli,  whose 
reputation  was  at  its  bloom  when  Shakespeare  saw 


KING    EICHABD  347 

Italy.  Indeed  the  poet  must  have  known  some- 
what of  that  diabolic  Florentine  counselor  of 
princely  iniquity  before  his  trip,  for  he  makes 
Gloster  (afterwards  Eichard  III)  boast  the  ability 
to  give  a  lesson. to  ''the  murderous  Machiavel"  in 
cunning  and  cruelty  (III  Henry  VI.  3.  2.) 

I  can  add  colors  to  the  chameleon, 
Change  shapes  with  Proteus  for  advantages. 
And  set  the  murderous  Machiavel  to  school. 

How  familiar  the  name  and  character  of  this 
Italian  writer  must  have  been,  if  not  to  an  Englisli 
audience,  at  least  to  the  poet,  may  be  inferred  from 
the  fact  that  mine  unlettered  host  of  Garter  in 
Merry  Wives  makes  the  to  us  learned  allusion: 
''Am  I  politic?  Am  I  subtle?  Am  I  Machiavel?" 
Where  did  Shakespeare  pick  up  the  knowledge  of 
Machiavelli  ?  Did  he  ever  read  the  latter 's  Prince  ? 
For  he  has  certainly  caught  somewhence  the  drift 
of  that  famous  book  which  mirrors  renascent  Italy 's 
political  character,  whereof  the  dramatist  embodies 
a  leading  strain  in  this  King  Richard  II,  who,  with 
his  highly  developed  Esthetic  and  very  deficient 
Ethic,  incarnates  strikingly  the  Italian  Renascence 
both  in  its  worth  and  in  its  unworth. 

A  number  of  indirect  echoes  of  the  poet's  trip 
abroad  may  be  heard  in  the  present  drama.  For 
instance,  we  can  feel  Shakespeare 's  own  loss  of  his 
native  tongue  when  he  touches  foreign  lands,  in  the 
deeply  throbbed  wail  of  banished  Norfolk: 


348  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

The  language  I  have  learned  these  forty  years, 

My  native  English,  now  I  must  forego. 

And  now  my  tongue 's  use  is  to  me  no  more 

Than  an  unstringed  viol  or  a  harp, 

Or  like  a  cunning  instrument  cased  up ; — 

And  dull,  unfeeling,  barren  ignorance 

Is  made  my  jailor  to  attend  on  mf>. 

Such  a  strain  was  attuned  after  the  poet 's  own  ex- 
perience when  on  leaving  England  he  found  amid  a 
strange  folk  his  supreme  gift  of  self-expression 
utterly  useless  and  nullified;  for  what  is  Shake- 
speare without  his  language?  Such  is  the  heart- 
felt note  of  personal  loss  here  intoned — the  greatest 
of  all  possible  losses,  unless  he  overcomes  it  by  talk- 
ing to  himself  and  fetching  back  home  that  English 
speech  of  his,  rather  the  best  of  human  vocabu- 
laries. The  word-loving  banished  Norfolk  now 
drops  out  of  the  play  till  we  learn  of  his  death, 
which  overtook  him  after  being  a  crusader 

Streaming  the  ensign  of  the  Christian  cross 
Against  black  pagans,  Turks  and  Saracens; 
And,  toiled  with  works  of  war,  retired  himself 
To  Italy ;  and  there  at  Venice  gave 
His  body  to  that  pleasant  country's  earth — 

which  passage,  really  lacking  any  connection  with 
the  dramatic  argument,  seems  here  interpolated  as 
an  exalted  reminiscence  of  the  poet's  Italian  jour- 
ney, whose  most  radiant  light-point  for  him  was 
Venice,  of  course. 


KING    EICHABD  349 

The  eulogy  on  England's  worth  and  glory,  which 
culminates  in  the  dying  words  of  John  of  Gaunt 
appears  chiefly  directed  against  the  Italianizing 
tendency  of  his. nephew  the  King: 

This  royal  throne  of  kings,  this  sceptred  isle, 
This  earth  of  majesty,  this  seat  of  Mars, 
This  other  Eden,  demi-paradise. 
This  fortress  built  by  Nature  for  herself, 
This  happy  breed  of  men,  this  little  world 
This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea — 

namely  this  England,  far  superior  to  other  lands 
even  to  beautiful  Italy,  is  now  disgraced  and  un- 
done by  its  sovereign  through  his  un-English  con- 
duct and  spirit.  Such  is  one  among  numerous 
signs  of  an  anti-foreign  nativistic  trend  in  this 
drama  and  in  its  Elizabethan  time.  And,  the  exiled 
Bolingbroke,  who  is  the  coming  Henry  IV,  stresses 
his  pro-English  character  in  seeming  contrast  with 
the  unnational  King  Richard  rhyming  his  patriotic 
refrain : 

Where'er  I  wander,  boast  of  this  I  can 
Though  banished,  yet  a  true-born  Englishman. 

The  source-searching  student  will  not  fail  to  read 
the  prose  account  of  Richard's  reign  in  the  old 
chronicler  Holinshed,  from  whom  Shakespeare  took 
his  story  almost  bodily.  The  events,  the  person- 
ages, the  purely  historic  elements  are  quite  the 
same — yet  what  a  difference!  Holinshed  has  no 
Italianizing  Richard,  who  is  just  the  supreme  poetic 


350  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA, 

achievement,  really  Shakespeare's  own  living  self 
interwrought  with  long-agone  dead  history.  Watch 
again  the  marvelous  metamorphosis  of  prose  into 
poetry : 

Nothing  of  him  that  doth  fade 
But  doth  suffer  a  sea-change 
Into  something  rich  and  strange. 

This  is  the  only  play  of  Shakespeare  in  which  the 
female  is  practically  left  out,  perhaps  because 
Richard  himself  is  the  woman  of  it  to  a  sufficiency, 
being  very  emotional  and  subjective,  yet  full  of 
presentiment  and  even  prophecy.  And  so  the  all- 
lover  Shakespeare  can  write  a  drama  without  any 
love  in  it.  To  be  sure  Richard  has  a  very  affection- 
ate Queen,  but  she  is  by  him  neglected  and  indeed 
negligible.  Sensuous,  self-indulgent,  when  misfor- 
tune strikes  him  he  responds  with  his  soul 's  music, 
like  a  stricken  stringed  instrument.  I  believe  that 
Shakespeare  was  deeply  sympathetic  with  this 
unique  creation  of  his  genius,  giving  therein  gleams 
of  his  own  self-expression,  for  it  was  the  blow  of 
fate  that  made  him  too  a  poet.  Also  he  was  pas- 
sionately enamored  of  renascent  Italy,  but  he  evi- 
dently saw  its  political  and  ethical  limitations, 
while  he  imbibed  lastingly  of  its  art  and  poetry. 
Richard  II  is  an  Italian  tyrant  of  the  Renascence 
set  on  the  throne  of  England  with  the  tragic  con- 
sequences thereof  to  himself,  through  which  he  scin- 
tillates as  a  poet,  exquisitely  glowing  down  to  a 
dying  iridescence.  Life  has  hitherto  been  one  long 
illusion,  so  he  exhorts  himself 


KING    BICHAED  353 

To  think  our  former  state  a  happy  dream, 

from  which  awakes  now  our  grand  disillusion. 

In  all  this  diapason  of  tuneful  sorrows  there  can 
be  heard  no  real  note  of  penitence,  of  a  conscience- 
troubled  heart ;  it  simply  attunes  us  to  the  pensive 
mood  of  nature  as  when  we  view  a  gorgeously  van- 
ishing sunset.  But  his  rival  Lancaster  who  has  de- 
throned and  undone  his  king,  feels  at  once  the  back- 
stroke of  conscience  in  the  deed  of  guilt,  and  ex- 
claims to  his  accomplice 

The  guilt  of  conscience  take  thou  for  thy  labor, 
With  Cain  go  wander  through  the  shades  of 

night. 
Lords,  I  protest,  my  soul  is  full  of  woe — 
I  '11  make  a  voyage  to  the  Holy  Land, 
To  wash  this  blood  off  from  my  guilty  hand. 

Wherein  we  may  well  hear  the  moral  difference  not 
only  between  Italianizing  Richard  and  Anglicizing 
Henry,  but  also  between  the  Northern  Reformation 
and  the  Southern  Renascence. 

Queen  Elizabeth,  who  also  had  a  decided  vein  of 
the  Renascence  in  her  cultural  make-up,  is  said  not 
to  have  liked  this  History  of  Richard  II,  perhaps 
as  holding  the  mirror  up  to  nature  with  too  much 
fidelity.  Especially  the  scene  of  the  sovereign's 
dethronement  seems  to  have  been  distasteful  to  her, 
for  she  knew  herself  giving  quite  sim51ar  provoca- 
tion, which  was  followed  by  similar  conspiracy 
against  her  throne,  though  unsuccessful.  So  it 
comes  that  only  in  the  third  Quarto  printed  in 


352  SB AKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA. 

1608  after  her  death,  was  the  exeided  deposition  of 
King  Richard  (Act  IV.  sc  1),  a  large  toll  of  a  hun- 
dred and  sixty  four  lines,  restored  to  its  original 
place  in  the  drama.  In  the  two  previous  Quartos 
of  1597  and  1598,  her  censor  had  evidently  cut  out 
the  offensive  passage,  which  seems  not  to  have  dis- 
turbed the  equanimity  of  her  successor.  King 
James.  Perhaps  here  lay  one  reason  why  Shake- 
speare was  not  all-too-fond  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 

Underneath  its  dainty  imaginative  sport,  there 
runs  a  profound  institutional  meaning  through  this 
play — nothing  less  than  the  problem  of  political 
revolution,  when  right  and  when  wrong.  But  now 
the  Italian-minded  King  is  gone,  and  the  English- 
minded  King  has  usurped  his  throne,  whereupon 
the  fates  of  History  take  a  fresh  turn,  and  a  new 
Epoch  opens  with  a  new  Monarch. 

Retrospect.  Here  ends  the  present  Epoch,  last- 
ing some  five  or  six  years,  of  Shakespeare's  life, 
with  its  exceedingly  diversified  content,  which  is 
made  up  of  many  poetic  experiments,  not  only  dra- 
matic but  also  epic  and  lyric.  Now  from  this 
bound-bursting  expansion  on  the  one  hand  follows 
a  time  of  equally  decided  concentration  on  the 
other,  in  which  he  confines  himself  to  his  one  lit- 
erary form,  the  drama — and  even  of  this  he  em- 
ploys not  every  species,  as  we  shall  note  more  fully 
later. 

But  here  the  student  of  the  poet,  looking  back- 
wards, is  to  hold  this  Second  Epoch  singly  before 
his  mind,  and  to  ask  what  may  it  signify  in  itself, 


KING    BICHABD  353 

and  what  function  can  it  perform  in  Shakespeare 's 
total  Life-drama?  The  young  poet  at  present 
drives  outward,  will  enlarge  his  previous  narrow 
horizons,  in  fact  he  starts  to  universalize  himself 
in  the  culture  of  his  art  which  is  poetry.  If  his 
previous  Epoch  (Collaboration)  is  his  primary 
schooling  in  his  vocation's  grand  discipline,  the 
present  Epoch  may  be  deemed  his  University  train- 
ing. Not  that  he  goes  to  Oxford  or  Cambridge, 
which  would  probably  have  ruined  his  career,  but 
to  the  University  of  Civilisation,  as  this  has  ex- 
pressed  itself  in  the  poetic  development  of  Europe, 
whose  two  sovereign  lines  of  evolution  we  have  al- 
ready noted  as  the  Classic  and  the  Northern,  or  as 
the  Mediterranean  and  the  Teutonic.  Both  these 
world-cultures  our  poet  during  the  present  Epoch 
is  absorbing,  appropriating,  and  also  reproducing 
in  his  own  multiform  compositions.  Thus  he  is 
testing  Civilization  itself  as  the  supreme  vehicle 
for  unfolding  the  individual  to  his  highest  worth 
and  achievement. 

Specially  to  the  educator  this  Second  Epoch 
would  seem  to  be  most  interesting  and  suggestive, 
inasmuch  as  here  can  be  seen  our  greatest  Anglo- 
Saxon  Genius  going  to  his  own  Higb-School,  and 
following  its  unique  curriculum.  Very  different  is 
it  from  that  earlier  Stratford  Grammar-SchooI 
with  its  prescribed  course  for  the  boy,  which,  how- 
ever, is  now  found  everywhere  to  have  been  the 
needful  preparation  for  his  present  world-embrac- 
ing self-education. 


354  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

But  enough  of  this  discursive  far-branching 
pedagogy,  which  has  served  its  purpose  for  Shake- 
speare and  for  us.  Though  he  be  still  the  Appren- 
tice mounting  upward  toward  his  final  Mastership, 
a  new  and  distinctive  Epoch  of  his  total  Appren- 
ticeship has  now  dawned,  which  has  its  own 
separate  right  of  being  set  forth  as  it  is  in  itself. 


OBIGINATION  355 


CHAPTER  THIRD. 

OBIGINATION 

Here  begins  a  new  stage  of  the  poet,  whom  we 
may  now  distinctively  call  the  originative  Shake- 
speare, in  contrast  with  the  preceding  Epoch,  in 
which  he  had  more  or  less  the  tendency  to  be  imi- 
tative, experimental,  dependent  on  somewhat  other 
than  himself.  To  be  sure,  he  showed  his  original 
gift  even  in  his  borrowings  and  gropings  after 
alien  forms — the  seeming  borrower  .-^f  the  unbor- 
rowable.  Still  we  are  to  note  henceforth  three 
main  independences  and  new  self-reliances: 
namely  in  his  art,  in  his  vocation,  and  in  his  finan- 
cial estate.  That  is,  he  becomes  a  free  man 
poetically,  theatrically,  and  economically.  Thus 
we  may  signal  the  present  as  an  Epoch  of  libera- 
tion for  the  poet,  internal  and  external,  in  work 
and  in  life. 

Accordingly  it  is  possible  to  hear  his  Genius  ad- 
dressing him:  ''No  more  experimentation,  no  more 
imitation,  stop  writing  your  Italianized  epics,  re- 
strict 7/our  lyrics  to  a  few  stage-songs  and  tail- 
rhymes,  though  you  may  let  your  love-life  pri- 
vately gush  out  into  an  occasional  sonnet.  You  are 
hereafter  to  compose  dramas  and  only  dramas, 
since  your  ultimate  Self,  your  soul 's  own  mould  is 
dramatic,  and  this  form  of  self-expression  you  have 


356  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

now  won.  Cling  to  it,  for  it  is  also  the  time 's  right 
shape  and  pressure  as  well  as  your  own.  Moreover 
your  whole  life  is  to  be  one  great  drama  in  which 
I,  your  Genius,  am  to  find  my  completed  utterance 
as  well  as  my  own  highest  realisation." 

So  it  comes  that  the  present  Epoch  bears  the 
stamp  of  concentration  rather  than  expansion;  it 
is  a  drawing  back  into  itself  instead  of  a  continual 
reaching  out  toward  something  else  and  somewhere 
else  beyond.  The  poet  has  found  himself  after 
many  voyages  of  exploration,  and  thkes  possession 
of  his  grand  discovery  as  a  new  field  of  achieve- 
ment. He  has  evolved  into  his  basic  form  of  self- 
expression,  the  drama,  which,  however,  he  is  still 
further  to  unfold  in  itself,  to  its  final  and  com- 
pleted fulfilment,  wherein  he  will  round  the  total 
compass  of  his  Life-drama.  Let  us,  then,  empha- 
size here  the  fact  of  his  unification,  which  neverthe- 
less radiates  itself  into  no  less  than  eleven  different 
plays. 

In  this  Epoch,  accordingly,  we  list  eight  Comedies 
and  three  Histories,  following  the  classification  of 
the  First  Folio.  And  the  three  Histories,  as  they 
are  here  designated,  belong  to  Comedy  or  perhaps 
to  Tragi-comedy  in  their  essential  character  (the 
two  Parts  of  Henry  IV  and  Henry  V).  Thus  we 
behold  Shakespeare  during  the  present  Epoch 
confining  himself  not  only  to  the  drama,  but  to  one 
kind  of  drama,  namely  Comedy.  He  will  write  no 
Tragedy  during  these  six  years:  he  indulges  and 
develops    his    purely    comic    Genius,    which    thus 


OBIGINATION  357 

reaches  it  largest  and  best  utterance,  culminating 
in  the  most  universally  comic  personality  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  world,  if  not  of  all  Literature,  Sir 
John  Falstaff.  From  this  point  of  view,  as  well  as 
from  others,  we  may  designate  the  present  exuber- 
ant spell  of  the  poet  as  his  Happy  Sexennium — 
happy  both  as  regards  himself  and  his  labors,  and 
in  general  depicting  happiness  after  the  storm,  and 
before  it  too,  as  we  shall  find  out  later. 

Still  it  is  ours  to  remember  that  Shakespeare  in 
this  his  new  departure  does  not  by  any  means  throw 
away  his  former  winnings.  He  keeps  and  develops 
not  a  few  of  the  Italian  gains  of  his  previous  Epoch. 
Especially  in  his  Comedies  Italy  remains  his  chief 
storehouse  for  locality,  story,  color,  and  in  part  for 
character.  Thus  he  is  not  yet  wholly  freed  of  his 
Apprenticeship  to  tradition  and  to  imitation. 

Here  we  may  hint  another  turn  and  far  pro- 
founder  in  the  present  Epoch:  the  poet  distinctly 
reacts  from  his  previous  social  revolt,  especially  in 
his  treatment  of  kingship ;  he  shows  himself  more 
in  sympathy  with  the  institutions  of  the  past,  es- 
pecially with  State  and  Church.  Hence  his  atti- 
tude toward  the  two  Lancastrian  Henrys  of  the 
coming  time  will  reveal  in  him  a  deeper  and  more 
reverent  acceptance  of  royalty  than  is  found  in  his 
earlier  historical  plays  so  fateful  to  kings.  This 
pronounced  reconcilement  with  the  institutions  of 
his  land  we  should  here  note  well,  since  we  shall 
find  it  to  tower  up  in  sharp  contrast  not  only  with 


358  SEAKESPE  ABE'S   LIFE  BEAM  A. 

his  evolved  lesser  past  but  likewise  with  his  un- 
evolved  greater  future. 

I.  We  have,  accordingly,  reached  the  signifi- 
cant time  in  our  poet's  Life-drama  when  he  has 
risen  to  the  independent  mastery  of  his  art  and  of 
himself,  and  we  may  add,  of  his  world,  manifesting 
such  mastery  in  his  literary  works  as  well  as  in  his 
private  transactions.  He  has  attained  financial 
success,  and  thus  he  has  won  his  economic  freedom, 
being  no  longer  bonded  to  those  three  slave-drivers 
of  our  physical  body — food,  raiment,  and  shelter. 
Very  different  was  his  situation  when  he  first  ar- 
rived in  London  from  Stratford;  then  he  hardly 
knew  whither  to  turn  for  a  piece  of  bread,  being 
compelled  to  the  most  menial  occupations  which  he 
could  pick  up  about  the  theatre.  Some  nine  or  ten 
years  have  elapsed  since  that  time ;  just  behold  his 
rise:  he  is  becoming  the  master  not  only  of  this 
little  London  stage  but  of  the  world's  stage.  In 
fact  he,  or  one  of  his  characters  during  this  Epoch, 
will  proudly  declare  "All  the  world  is  a  stage", 
especially  Shakespeare's  stage. 

And  now  it  is  in  place  for  us  to  try  to  bring  to- 
gether in  a  single  rapid  forelook  this  one  consid- 
erable Epoch  of  the  poet's  Life-drama,  lasting 
about  six  years,  as  we  measure  it,  say  from  1594-5 
till  1600-1,  without  exacting  too  rigid  time-limits. 
Let  us  watch  him  turning  into  the  present  Epoch, 
when  he  is  some  thirty  years  old,  and  working 
through  it  till  he  passes  thirty-six  in  the  full  tide 
of  a  fortunate  career.    He  has  become  a  successful 


OBIGINATION  359 

actor,  perhaps  not  great;  has  advanced  to  be  in 
part  owner  of  a  remunerative  theatre;  but  his  su- 
preme achievement  is  that  he  writes  at  least  eleven 
dramas,  about  two  for  each  year  of  this  Epoch — 
dramas,  most  of  which  still  keep  their  place  on  the 
stage  after  more  than  three  centuries.  But,  what 
is  far  more  significant,  all  of  them  are  to-day 
perused  and  pondered,  as  are  no  other  English 
words,  by  millions  of  readers  around  our  entire 
globe.  Seemingly  the  most  immortal  of  European 
writ  is  this  of  Shakespeare;  so  we  seize  it  and 
search  it  and  even  belabor  it  for  the  secret  of  its 
immortality,  and  therein  of  our  own. 

The  present  Epoch,  then,  is  one  of  prevailing 
good-fortune  to  our  poet,  though  not  without  occa- 
sional clouds  flecking  its  sunshine.  Moreover 
through  it  plays  a  dominant  note  of  reconcilement 
and  restoration  both  within  and  without,  traceable 
in  his  soulful  speech  as  well  as  in  his  conciliatory 
deeds.  In  1596  it  is  reported  that  he  went  back  to 
his  home  in  Stratford,  and  this  visit  is  supposed  to 
have  been  his  first  one  since  his  departure  thence 
in  1585.  His  three  children  and  his  wife  were  still 
living,  probably  in  Anne  Hathaway 's  humble  cot- 
tage; his  father  and  mother  had  never  given  up 
their  house  in  Henley  Street,  though  sinking  into 
ever-  deepening  poverty ;  other  kindred  were  in  the 
town  and  neighborhood.  Especially,  one  thinks, 
did  he  long  to  see  again  the  mother  of  his  genius, 
Mary  Arden  Shakespeare,  now  getting  old,  but  still 
active,  as  she  lives  yet  a  dozen  years.     Could  he 


360  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

forget  her  care  for  his  early  education,  which  has 
shown  itself  the  spiritual  substructure  of  his  fu- 
ture work  and  greatness? 

Another  incident  in  this  connection  is  unfor- 
gettable: the  death  of  his  only  son  Hamnet  (some- 
times spelled  Hamlet),  who  was  buried  in  the- 
Stratford  Church  August  11th  1596,  having 
reached  the  age  of  eleven  years  and  a  half.  The 
sad  rite  took  place  doubtless  in  the  presence  of  the 
father  and  his  family.  May  we  not  suppose  that 
it  was  the  illness  of  his  boy  which  brought  him 
back  to  his  home,  and  led  the  way  to  his  domestic 
reconciliation,  as  it  often  does  ?  At  any  rate  Shake- 
speare never  again  forgot  Stratford  to  the  end  of 
his  days.  In  less  than  a  year  after  his  son's  fu- 
neral. May  4th  1597,  we  find  him  purchasing  the 
prominent  building  known  as  New  Place,  an  aris- 
tocratic mansion,  a  hundred  years  old  and  some- 
what decayed  like  the  town  itself.  There  was  only 
one  larger  residence  in  Stratford,  it  is  said,  and 
herein  we  may  catch  a  glimpse  of  Shakespeare's 
new  purpose  in  life.  He  will  employ  his  wealth  to 
win  the  position  of  being  the  first  citizen  of  his 
community,  in  pursuance  of  the  custom  of  the  time. 
Also  he  would  enjoy  the  rank  and  the  display  of 
the  titled  Gentleman.  Records  show  that  he  soon 
starts  to  repairing  his  somewhat  dilapidated  edifice, 
and  to  laying  out  a  spacious  garden  round  it  in  or- 
der to  beautify  its  weedy  neglected  grounds,  on 
which  stood  the  famous  mulberry  tree  planted  by 
the  poet  himself  according  to  tradition,  though  long 


OBIGINATION  361 

since  whittled  into  little  souvenirs,  and  eternized 
in  many  a  storied  reminiscence. 

Such  a  deed  shows  his  present  spirit,  which  is 
that  of  renewal  and  restoration,  starting  from  that 
renovated  mansion,  and  extending  to  his  own  family 
and  even  to  the  town  itself.  For  Stratford  then 
was  in  serious  decline,  approaching  complete  pov- 
erty. Two  large  fires  in  rapid  succession  had  re- 
cently devastated  the  place  (in  1594  and  in  1595) 
having  destroyed  120  dwelling-houses,  so  that  its 
citizens  had  to  appeal  to  the  country  for  help.  Bad 
harvests  followed,  the  people  could  not  pay  their 
national  taxes,  from  which  upon  petition  they  were 
released  by  the  Government.  Shakespeare  gave 
his  assistance  both  at  home  and  at  London  in  get- 
ting relief  for  his  town;  indeed  he  seems  to  have 
been  the  most  prosperous  man  in  it,  if  not  the  only 
one,  giving  too  the  best  example  for  its  recupera- 
tion. 

Thus  we  find  him  in  this  Epoch  doing  his  part 
toward  the  uplift  of  his  fallen  community.  At  the 
same  time  he  begins  restoring  to  fresh  prosperity 
his  declined  family,  which  had  shared  the  fate  of 
its  environing  town.  His  debt-burdened  parent, 
who  for  years  had  hardly  dared  appear  in  public 
or  even  at  church  through  fear  of  some  law-officer, 
gets  sudden  relief  from  all  prosecution,  evidently 
by  means  of  the  son's  timely  disbursements.  In 
1597  we  read  of  a  lawsuit  brought  Cor  the  recovery 
of  his  mother's  mortgaged  estate  known  as  Asbies, 
doubtless  through  the  instigation  of  her  returned 


362  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

boy  with  his  pocket  full  of  money,  since  old  John 
Shakespeare,  the  husband,  seems  to  have  sunk 
every  penny  of  hers,  as  well  as  of  his  own,  in  his 
various  stranded  speculations.  But  the  most  fa- 
mous act  in  this  drama  of  domestic  restoration  is 
the  poet's  attempt  to  obtain  from  the  College  of 
Heralds  in  London  the  titled  honor  of  a  coat-of- 
arms  for  his  father,  who  thereby  will  acquire  new 
social  rank  and  prestige,  being  made  over  from  a 
fugitive  plebeian  debtor  into  a  fine  old  aristocratic 
English  Gentleman.  The  mother,  who  comes  of  the 
well-born  Arden  family,  is  also  to  partake  of  the 
new  dignity.  But  doubtless  the  chief  incentive 
must  be  that  William  Shakespeare  himself,  though 
some  thirty  three  years  old,  would  receive  through 
this  operation  a  sudden  fresh  birth,  with  patrician 
blood  throbbing  through  his  veins,  and  with  a  titled 
tail-piece  tacked  to  his  name. 

Whatever  we  here  and  now  may  think  of  the 
matter,  such  ambition  for  title  lay  in  the  worthiest 
of  the  blood-worshipful  time.  But  the  point  which 
we  should  especially  select  and  contemplate  in  these 
transactions  is  Shakespeare's  spirit,  which  is  seek- 
ing to  re-build  his  shattered  town  and  home,  to  re- 
store his  Family  and  Community,  out  of  their 
lapsed  condition  to  their  happier  and  better  estate. 
Thus  he  shows  himself  in  his  conduct  an  institu- 
tional man,  as  well  as  in  his  writing,  and  the  great 
dramatist  makes  just  this  life  of  his  at  Stratford  an 
actual  drama,  quite  concordant  in  its  deepest  un- 
dertones with  his  feigned  drama  at  London.    Here 


ORIGINATION  363 

it  should  be  added  that  he  must  have  found  still 
in  his  father's  home  his  younger  brother,  Edmund 
Shakespeare,  sixteen  years  old  in  1596,  whom  he 
seems  to  have  taken  to  London  with  him  and  to 
have  trained  for  the  stage,  but  who  died  in  1607 
and  was  buried  at  a  London  church,  ''with  a  fore- 
noon knell  of  the  great  bell",  apparently  in  honor 
of  the  deceased,  now  the  son  of  a  Gentleman.  Two 
other  brothers  he  doubtless  found  at  Stratford, 
Gilbert  (born  1566),  Richard  (born  1573),  on  his 
return  thither,  both  younger  than  himself  arid 
jjrobably  needing  a  little  lift  from  their  fortunate 
brother,  like  the  rest  of  the  kin  and  the  town.  A 
sister,  Joan  (born  1569)  is  to  be  added  to  this  fam- 
ily group  of  parents  and  children,  from  whom  the 
poet  was  early  separated,  but  whose  experiences  of 
joy  and  sorrow  lie  imbedded,  even  if  veiled  and 
transformed,  in  all  his  poetry.  A  little  sister,  eight 
years  old,  passed  away  in  1579,  when  the  poet  was 
a  youth  of  fifteen ;  echoes  of  brotherly  and  motherly 
grief  over  such  a  loss  (here  we  may  think  of  Queen 
Constance  and  her  Arthur)  may  be  heard  through- 
out his  Life-drama.  For  the  domestic  strain  of 
Shakespeare's  work  is  the  fullest,  deepest,  and 
strongest  in  it,  and  could  have  been  derived  no 
whence  else  but  from  his  own  home.  Thus  his 
family  appeal  with  its  love  in  all  shapes  and  turns, 
is  intenser  and  more  universal  than  any  other  gift 
of  his  genius.  One  may  be  permitted  to  think  that 
his  separation  from  the  parental  hearth,  and  his 
undomestic  life  in  London  may  have  caused  him  to 


364  SHAKESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

idealize  with  so  much  power  the  Family  during  the 
present  Epoch,  especially  in  his  Comedies,  whose 
center  is  Love's  chosen  woman,  and  whose  main 
theme  is  domestic  return  and  restoration  after 
outer  obstruction  removed  and  the  soul's  inner  dis- 
sonance overcome.  Hence  these  six  years  may  well 
be  deemed  the  poet's  happiest  of  a  life-time,  and 
worthy  to  be  named  his  Happy  Sexennium. 

Thus  it  is  here  in  place  to  bring  to  the  fore  and 
to  emphasize  the  deeply  intoned  concordance  be- 
tween Shakespeare's  work  and  word,  the  heart- 
singing  harmonies  uniting  his  outer  and  his  inner 
worlds,  such  as  will  be  heard  attuning  his  poetic 
self-expression  throughout  the  forthcoming  Epoch. 
Generations  of  readers  and  spectators  have  enjoyed 
and  will  continue  to  enjoy  with  the  poet  this  hap- 
I)iest  time  of  his  life,  and  they  have  been  enabled 
to  make  it  their  own  through  his  magic  power  of 
impartation.  Still  here  we  should  give  warning 
that  this  sunlit  time  of  blissful  creation  with  its 
abiding  freedom  from  death,  which  hardly  dares 
enter  it,  will  be  followed  by  just  its  opposite, 
namely  man's  darkest  eclipse  of  tragedy  ending  in 
doomed  mortality's  passing-away.  But  with  this 
one  sudden  lurch  of  pre-sentiment,  we  shall  settle 
back  into  our  immediate  outlook  on  the  good  time 
prepared  for  us  by  Shakespeare 's  comic  genius. 

II.  And  now  having  set  down  the  main  personal 
facts  and  events  of  this  epochal  transition  of  the 
poet,  we  shall  next  try  for  the  deeper  causes  under- 
lying it,  as  it  did  not  happen  altogether  by  acci- 


OBIGINATION  365 

dent.  Nor  did  it  take  place  in  a  day  nor  in  a  year, 
but  it  followed  its  own  steady  pace  of  evolution  to- 
ward its  goal. 

Undoubtedly  the  time  was  one  of  relaxation  from 
the  tense  effort  and  even  anxiety  which  continued 
to  harass  England  during  several  years  even  after 
the  defeat  of  the  Armada.  For  Spain,  then  the 
mightiest  and  the  wealthiest  power  in  Europe,  kept 
threatening  to  repeat  the  invasion.  But  by  1594 
such  apprehension  had  pretty  well  died  down,  so 
that  the  whole  land  felt  more  frolicksome  and  so 
to  speak,  comic.  Then  the  present  Epoch  probably 
spanned  Queen  Elizabeth's  best  years,  when  she 
was  acknowledged  at  her  greatest,  when  she  was 
more  free  from  outer  peril  and  from  internal  con- 
spiracy than  before  or  afterwards.  Still  even  now 
she  did  not  wholly  escape  a  domestic  treason, 
whereof  we  shall  find  the  poet  himself  to  show 
some  knowledge  in  his  work. 

Still  for  Shakespeare  in  person  this  was  the 
gladdest  time  of  all  his  days — the  most  harmonious 
in  spirit,  the  most  successful  in  affairs.  Not  his 
deepest,  not  his  greatest  we  say,  but  his  happiest, 
as  we  have  the  right  to  infer  from  his  one  domi- 
nant note  of  self-expression,  which  is  that  of  com- 
edy, or  of  reconciliation  of  life's  conflicts  within 
and  without. 

Such  a  state  of  mind  was  quite  different  from 
what  he  had  ever  experienced  before.  He  had  been 
more  or  less  the  protester,  the  recalcitrant,  the  mal- 
content, with  a  bent  toward  radicalism  perchance. 


366  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

discordant  with  the  transmitted  social  order.  His 
near  companions  had  formed  that  wild  set  of  defiant 
world-storming  poets  whose  chief  was  Marlowe, 
once  his  master  and  exemplar.  Young  Shakespeare 
without  question  had  shared  in  their  revolt  against 
the  accepted  institutions  of  their  age,  had  gone 
through  the  mighty  experience  of  social  dissent  and 
disharmony,  and  had  sucked  that  egg  dry,  being 
now  ready  to  fling  away  the  shell,  and  to  sweep 
forward  to  the  next  stage  in  his  life's  evolution. 

But  let  us  call  up  what  a  fateful  spectacle  Shake- 
speare had  witnessed  by  1594-5.  That  whole  crowd 
of  rebellious  sons  of  the  Muse  had  before  his  eyes 
sunk  down  to  death.  Through  their  deeds  they  had 
shown  themselves  fated,  along  with  their  gigantic 
protagonist  Marlowe,  whose  hapless  end  in  1593 
we  have  elsewhere  recounted.  But  they  all  went 
the  same  way  at  last — Greene,  Peele,  Kyd,  Nash — 
a  band  of  poets  more  tragic  in  their  lives  than  the 
bloodiest  play  they  ever  wrote,  and  they  reveled  in 
stage-gore. 

We  may  dare  conceive  what  must  have  been  Wil- 
liam Shakespeare's  most  poignant  thought  as  well 
as  his  tensest  resolution  when  he  looked  upon  that 
real  tragedy  of  his  nearest  associates  enacted  on 
life's  theatre.  He  questions  his  ow^n  oracle: 
''Shall  I  too  be  fated  along  with  them?"  We  may 
hear  his  answer  in  his  work  as  he  turns  over  a  new 
leaf  in  his  book  of  cardinal  resolutions,  and  starts 
upon  the  present  Epoch  which  show^s  a  decided  re- 
action against  what  he  has  been  and  done  hitherto. 


ORIGINATION  367 

We  shall  find  him  in  this  Epoch  more  and  more 
preservative  of  that  social  and  institutional  order 
which  has  been  established  of  old  and  handed  down 
from  the  past,  and  against  which  he  has  hitherto 
been  in  a  state  of  decided  tension,  if  not  of  open 
conflict. 

Accordingly  the  question  will  rise  up :  how  comes 
it  that  Shakespeare  too  did  not  perish  with  his 
companions  when  he  was  in  the  same  boat  plunging 
netherwards  over  the  cataract?  Can  we  detect  the 
saving  element  that  lay  in  him  specially  as  distin- 
guished from  them?  More  particularly,  what  held 
him  back  from  the  fate  of  Marlowe,  for  years  his 
teacher  and  indeed  prototype  ?  Our  answer  is  Con- 
science. We  have  noticed  deeply  urgent  through 
quite  all  his  works  hitherto,  even  in  his  earliest 
Henry  VI,  and  most  emphatically  in  his  diabolic 
Richard  III,  the  voice  of  Conscience,  that  secret 
critic  and  monitor  of  the  wayward  and  errant  Self 
in  the  man,  that  hidden  counterstroke  within  him 
to  the  negative  conduct  of  his  dramatic  associates. 
As  already  set  forth,  Marlowe  is  hardly  aware  of 
Conscience  either  in  his  works  or  in  his  life,  and 
the  same  must  be  said  generally  of  his  group  of 
fellow-poets.  But  Shakespeare  knew  it  well,  felt 
its  keenest  thrusts,  and  recorded  them  in  his  salient 
characters,  as  a  portion — and,  as  the  matter  turned 
out,  a  saving  portion — of  his  deepest  experience. 

We  have  already  remarked  and  shall  have  often 
reason  to  repeat  that  the  poet  partook  of  the  most 
searching  spiritual  movement  of  his  age,  namely 


368  SRAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Puritanism,  from  which  sprang  this  new  energy  of 
Conscience  among  the  English  folk.  To  be  sure 
Shakespeare  doubtless  shunned  and  laughed  at  and 
even  satirized  the  vagaries  of  the  Puritans,  and  he 
also  opposed  their  excesses;  still  the  workings  of 
the  Puritanic  Conscience  as  well  as  the  language  of 
the  Puritanic  Bible  (in  the  Genevan  version)  can 
be  traced  throughout  his  whole  written  Life-drama. 

III.  Here  we  cannot  help  feeling  attuned  to 
take  yet  another  look  at  Christopher  Marlowe,  our 
last  look  perchance,  for  he  now  disappears  person- 
ally from  Shakespeare's  dramatic  career  and  life, 
and  from  his  own.  Through  all  this  long  Appren- 
ticeship of  our  poet,  we  have  noticed  Marlowe  leap- 
ing to  the  front  at  its  salient  conjunctures.  Verily 
he  seems  to  be  the  first  promoter  and  Promethean 
artificer  or  shaper  of  Shakespeare 's  primordial  pro- 
toplasmic Genius.  Without  him  and  his  prelimin- 
inary  creative  work,  we  can  hardly  conceive  our 
supreme  dramatist  to  have  been  what  he  was,  or 
perchance  to  have  become  at  all.  It  required  a 
Marlowe  to  develop  a  Shakespeare — a  fact  which 
has  its  striking  parallels,  and  thus  by  no  means 
stands  alone  in  literary  history. 

Still  the  present  final  influence  of  Marlowe  is  al- 
together different  from  his  previous  import.  For 
he  now  becomes  the  source  of  a  strong  reaction 
and  remonstrance  in  his  former  pupil,  who  faces 
about  to  the  opposite — turns  to  the  conservative 
instead  of  the  radical,  to  the  defender  of  tradition 
instead  of  its  assailant,  to  the  upholder  of  the  exist- 


OBIGINATION  369 

ing  order  instead  of  its  adversary.  Indeed  during 
this  Epoch  Shakespeare  gets  to  be  a  direct  parti- 
cipant in  man's  transmitted  social  system,  he  be- 
comes a  large  property-holder,  returns  to  domestic 
and  communal  life  at  Stratford,  seeks  a  new  social 
title  and  rank,  and  so  evolves  into  a  completely 
conscious  institutional  man.  Thus  he  is  the  anti- 
type of  his  former  prototype  Marlowe,  in  fact  of 
his  former  Self,  especially  during  the  earliest  Epoch 
of  this  his  Life-drama. 

It  will  be  worth  the  while  to  take  a  brief  review 
of  the  leading  phases  of  the  mutual  relation  between 
Marlowe  and  Shakespeare,  the  literary  Dioscuri  of 
this  world-compelling  Elizabethan  age,  verily  the 
twin  sons  of  Zeus,  born  together  in  the  same  year 
(1564),  not  indeed  of  the  same  physical  mother 
but  of  the  same  womb  of  Time.  But  the  one  per- 
ished early  (like  mythical  Castor  or  real  Keats, 
Schiller  and  many  others)  with  career  unfulfilled, 
while  the  other  Olympian  brother  Pollux  (Shake- 
speare, or  Goethe)  was  destined  to  achieve  the  full 
cycle  of  his  Life-drama.  Still  they  remain  twinned 
in  immortality,  and  continue  to  revolve  about  each 
other  quite  inseparable,  the  unfulfilled  about  the 
fulfilled,  or  the  phantom  ever  circling  the  reality. 

There  is  little  question  that  young  Shakespeare 
witnessed  the  early  presentation  of  Marlow's  Tam- 
hurlane,  and  therein  beheld  a  gleam  of  his  own  fu- 
ture calling.  Then  followed,  in  that  first  Epoch 
already  set  forth,  his  collaboration  with  Marlowe 


370  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

as  master  and  model,  from  whom  he  wins  the  new 
dramatic  verse-rhythm,  the  mighty  line,  and  the 
magnificent  word  as  well  as  the  Titanic  character- 
isation and  spirit  of  the  world-defier.  He  learns 
to  reproduce  with  increased  power  the  Marlowese 
super-man,  whom  we  may  see  best  as  demon  Rich- 
ard III.  But  in  the  Second  Epoch  the  hitherto  in- 
tergrown  brain-twins,  the  two  poets,  separate  from 
each  other,  become  individualized,  independent  yet 
interdependent,  each  following  his  own  orbit,  but 
both  still  revolving  around  each  other  in  a  common 
attraction  and  repulsion.  This  time  lasts  some 
years,  with  much  significant  creation  on  both  sides, 
whereupon  the  one  luminary  becomes  suddenly  ex- 
tinct, and  the  other  speeds  aloft  along  his  way 
alone,  entering  upon  the  present  new  Epoch  which 
is  very  different  from  what  has  gone  before. 

But  we  are  not  to  think  that  Marlowe,  though  no 
longer  at  hand  in  living  presence,  is  without  influ- 
ence upon  Shakespeare.  The  failure  of  the  Genius 
often  leaves  a  deeper  mark  upon  men  and  upon 
time  than  his  success;  the  Moscow  defeat  of  the 
conqueror  becomes  the  greatest  event  of  his  life, 
and  only  a  Napoleon  could  bring  upon  himself  such 
a  world-embracing  personal  eclipse.  Marlowe's 
own  tragedy  left  a  larger  and  more  lasting  impress 
upon  Shakespeare  than  any  of  his  plays.  For 
Shakespeare  is  now  determined  through  Marlowe 
and  his  fate  to  strike  into  a  new  path  which  leads 
in  the  opposite  fateless  direction.  Hence  comes 
what  we  here  have  called  our  poet's  reaction;  he 


ORIGINATION  371 

will  evolve  himself  into  what  Marlowe  was  not,  and 
will  spiritually  develop  gifts  which  jNIarlowe  had 
not.  He  will  specially  cultivate  the  Comic  Muse 
whose  inspiration  lay  outside  of  Marlowe's  genius; 
he  will  portray  in  deepest  love  and  admiration  the 
woman-soul  for  which  Marlowe  has  little  real  ap- 
preciation or  homage ;  finally  from  the  mighty  non- 
conformist Marlowe  reveling  in  defiant  revolt 
against  established  authority,  Shakespeare  will  turn 
the  poetic  conformist  and  upholder  of  the  consti- 
tuted world  of  Society,  Church,  and  State.  We 
shall  see  him  advance  from  the  judgment  and  the 
dethronement  of  worthless  kings — caitiff  John, 
monster  Richard  III,  elegiac  weak  Richard  II — 
to  the  enthronement  of  Henry  IV  and  Henry  V  as 
heroic  royalties.  Such  is,  to  our  mind,  the  outer 
transition  as  well  as  the  inner  transformation  of 
Shakespeare  out  of  his  previous  into  his  present 
Epoch. 

But  even  during  this  time  and  mood  of  reaction 
and  opposition,  Shakespeare  does  not  forget  the 
great  worth  of  Marlowe,  of  whom  we  may  still 
catch  him  breathing  many  a  heartfelt  reminder,  es- 
pecially in  certain  Sonnets.  Some  unique  touch 
will  force  the  reader  to  exclaim :  ' '  Tliere !  Shake- 
speare is  thinking  of  his  old  master. ' '  One  Sonnet 
in  particular  seems  to  be  a  glorifying  recapitula- 
tion of  Marlow's  distinctive  qualities,  as  the  writer 
looks  backward  in  deep  recognition,  yet  not  with- 
out a  strain  of  rivalry  (No.  86)  : 


372  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFEDEAMA 

Was  it  the  proud  full  sail  of  his  great  verse, 
Bound  for  the  prize  of  ail-too  precious  you, 
That  did  my  ripe  thoughts  in  my  brain  inhearse, 
Making  their  tomb  the  womb  wherein  they  grew  ? 
Was  it  his  spirit,  by  spirits  taught  to  write 
Above  a  mortal  pitch,  that  struck  me  dead? 
No !   neither  he  nor  his  compeers  by  night 
Giving  him  aid,  my  verse  astonished. 
He  nor  that  affable  familiar  ghost 
Which  nightly  gulls  him  with  intelligence, 
As  victors  of  my  silence  cannot  boast,- 
I  was  not  sick  of  any  fear  from  thence. 
But  when  your  countenance  fil  'd  up  his  line, 
Then  lacked  I  matter;  that  enfeebled  mine. 

Certainly  Shakespeare  could  exalt  no  other  contem- 
porary poet  but  Marlowe  for  "the  proud  full  sail 
of  his  great  verse",  or  so  strikingly  characterize 
"his  spirit  by  spirits  taught  to  write  above  a  mor- 
tal pitch",  thus  stressing  his  superhuman  Titanic 
fetches  of  inspiration.  Even  his  group  of  collabo- 
rators seem  darkly  suggested,  being  "his  compeers 
by  night  giving  him  aid".  Some  have  conjectured 
Chapman  to  be  this  rival  poet,  but  he  can  fulfil  no 
such  lofty  description,  even  with  his  famous  trans- 
lation of  Homer,  of  being  able  to  '  *  inhearse  my  ripe 
thoughts  in  my  brain". 

So  much  may  reasonably  be  affirmed;  but  now 
rise  the  difficulties  of  this  Sonnet.  Who  may  be  the 
"ail-too  precious  you'%  proclaimed  to  be  "the 
prize''  which  the  poet  is  ''bound  for''  in  his  quest? 


OBIGINATION  373 

Many  conjectures :  some  man  or  woman,  some  ideal 
or  thing  of  reality.  Thus  again  we  face  the  ever- 
recurring  pronominal  problem  of  the  Sonnets  gen- 
erally. Three  pronouns  are  here  interwoven  in  its 
fibre:  the  acknowledged  I  (Shakespeare,  cer- 
tainly), the  supposed  he  (Marlowe  probably),  the 
mysterious  You  (cause  of  multitudinous  dubious 
guesses  in  the  commentators).  As  we  look  at  the 
situation,  the  poet  is  here  taking  a  retrospect  of  his 
early  relation  to  Marlowe,  and  assigning  the  reason 
vfhj  he  was  overwhelmed  to  silence  by  the  latter 's 
co-ercive  genius  with  ''his  compeers  by  night  giv- 
ing him  aid ' ' : 

I  was  not  sick  of  any  fear  from  thence. 

But  when  your  countenance  fil  'd  up  his  line. 

Then  lacked  7  matter ;  that  enfeebled  mine. 

Shakespeare  seems  to  confess  that  he  had  no  fear 
of  the  preponderance  of  Marlowe's  genius,  except 
that  one  time  "when  your  countenance  fil'd  up  his 
line",  probably  an  allusion  to  the  first  effect  of  wit- 
nessing Tamhurlane  on  the  young  poet,  who  nat- 
urally then  felt  his  own  ' '  lack  of  matter '  ^  and  im- 
mature feebleness  in  comparison  with  his  master's 
"mighty  line",  as  Ben  Jonson  has  famed  it.  So 
much  we  can  see  and  say  in  regard  to  the  purport 
of  this  Sonnet,  without  specially  hunting  down  the 
noun  for  its  elusive  pronouns  you  and  your. 

In  general  Marlowe's  lot  was  to  be  the  precursor 
and  prophetic  harbinger  of  a  greater  than  himself ; 


374  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA, 

just  that  indeed  has  given  him  his  larger  immortal- 
ity. To-day  we  cannot  read  genetically  Marlowe's 
plays  without  feeling  that  Shakespeare  is  his  true 
fulfilment  and  realisation. 

IV.  This  Epoch  has,  we  may  again  emphasize, 
no  tragedies  among  its  eleven  dramas,  which  at 
present  constitute  the  poet's  sole  activity.  He  be- 
comes now  and  remains  henceforth  purely  the  dra- 
matist to  the  end  of  his  career.  The  rhymed  Ital- 
ianized poems  of  the  previous  Epoch  fall  away  for- 
ever, and  even  the  little  jingling  couplets  in  his 
plays  keep  getting  fewer.  His  lyricism  of  love 
finds  vent  in  the  ecstasies  of  his  blank-verse,  which 
often  rises  to  song 's  attunement  with  its  own  secret 
consonances.  Still  beneath  this  overflowing  dra- 
matic stream,  little  melodious  pulsations  of  his 
under-life  will  bubble  up  almost  in  spite  of  himself, 
throbbing  brief  emotional  jets  of  his  deepest  per- 
sonal experience  in  the  form  of  the  Sonnet. 

Hence  we  shall  follow  the  movement  of  the  pres- 
ent Epoch  along  the  three  fore-mentioned  lines — 
Comedies,  Tragedies,  Sonnets, — remembering,  how- 
ever, that  they  are  all  attuned  to  one  fundamental 
key-note,  that  of  final  triumph  over  obstacles,  and 
reconciliation  after  inner  and  outer  conflict.  We 
are  never  to  forget  that  in  life  and  writ  it  is  the 
poet's  Happy  Sexennium — not  his  greatest  time 
of  productivity,  but  his  happiest. 

Again  we  would  prompt  our  thinking  reader  that 
it  is  worth  his  while  to  grapple  this  Third  Epoch 
by  itself,  and  to  formulate  its  distinctive  purport 


COMEDIES  375 

separately  with  its  own  designation.  In  like  man- 
ner, we  have  already  craved  him  to  scan  the  mean- 
ing and  the  connection  of  the  foregoing  Second 
Epoch,  which  shows  such  strong  contrast  to  the 
one  which  we  now  enter  upon.  But  from  that  out- 
reaching  diversification  this  is  now  the  turn  to  in- 
ward unification,  which  is  of  a  special  kind:  it  is 
the  poet's  reconciled  time  and  the  expression  of  the 
same  in  the  drama,  yea  in  one  sort  of  drama,  the 
comic. 


Comedies. 

Specially  we  are  now  to  treat  of  that  class  of  the 
poet 's  Comedies  which  are  embraced  in  the  present 
Epoch  only,  inasmuch  as  they  have  their  own  sepa- 
rate character,  and  reveal  their  author  passing 
through  a  significant  stage  of  his  evolution.  He 
wrote  other  Comedies  both  before  and  after  the 
present  time,  but  they  have  in  his  life  a  different 
office,  if  not  a  different  meaning.  Already  we  have 
seen  him  testing  himself  in  numerous  literary 
forms,  among  which  is  the  comic,  and  in  his  last 
Period  we  shall  find  him  returning  to  Comedy  but 
of  a  deeper  strain,  in  accord  with  his  new  and 
deeper  experience.  From  the  list  of  the  First  Folio 
we  set  down  eight  Comedies  belonging  to  the  pres- 
ent Epoch,  which  constitute  altogether  the  largest 
and  most  diversified  part  of  his  work  during  this 
Happy  Sexennium.    Thus  man  and  the  world  now 


376  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

turn  comic  to  the  poet ;  indeed  we  may  say  that  for 
some  six  years  henceforth  Shakespeare's  Universe 
becomes  one  great  Comedy. 

Still  we  are  not  to  forget  such  a  merry  and  rec- 
onciled spell  is  but  a  part,  but  one  scene  of  his  total 
Life-drama,  being  interjected  as  it  were  between 
two  tragic  periods  of  creation.  The  time  of  Rich- 
ard III  and  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  lies  behind  him, 
but  the  immortal  pangs  of  his  greatest  Tragedies, 
Hamlet  and  Lea7%  are  yet  to  come,  bringing  to  the 
reader  the  profoundest  problem  of  all  Shakespear- 
ian psychology.  Why  should  our  poet  have  to  turn 
tragic  again,  more  deeply  tragic  than  ever?  With 
this  single  out  looking  glimpse,  let  the  question  drop 
for  the  present,  since  we  have  next  to  take  a  stroll 
through  Shakepeare's  purely  comic  domain  with 
its  varied  poetic  strains  made  up  of  life's  dis- 
sonances overcome. 

In  general.  Comedy  starts  with  some  disturbance 
or  obstacle,  or  with  some  kind  of  a  perverted  world, 
which,  however,  is  to  be  restored  from  its  perver- 
sion, saving  itself  and  its  characters  in  the  process 
of  the  drama.  Thus  its  basic  note  in  Shakespeare 
is  mediation,  recovery,  renewal  out  of  some  unto- 
ward experience,  which  may  result  from  human 
frailty,  foible,  folly,  illusion,  or  even  wrong.  Hence 
the  comic  movement  in  its  wholeness  is  remedial. 

As  regards  the  eight  Comedies  embraced  in  the 
present  Epoch,  we  are  hardly  able  to  date  them 
separately  to  the  precise  year,  since  no  existing 
documents  are  adequate  for  such  a  purpose.     Still 


COMEDIES  377 

it  is  possible  to  arrange  them  in  three  chronological 
groups,  which  also  correspond  to  their  general  pur- 
port,  as  well  as  to  the  poet's  special  development. 

First  Group.  Somewhere  between  1594-5  and 
1596-7,  we  place  three  early  dramas  which  have 
enough  in  common  to  be  clustered  into  one  fascicle. 
They  all  have  a  certain  setting  in  illusion  or  in  a 
dream-world.  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  may 
be  put  down  as  the  start,  or  as  the  overture,  wliich 
gives  the  key-note  even  in  its  title.  Its  action  moves 
out  of  real  life  into  fairy-land  which  is  made  to 
appear  when  the  characters  lie  asleep  in  a  wood. 
In  such  a  setting,  then,  the  play  turns  to  a  comedy 
of  intrigue  with  its  complication  and  solution.  Thus 
the  drama  is  enacted  in  the  world  of  illusion,  is  in- 
deed a  deceptive  vision  into  which  we  wander  and 
out  of  which  we  are  restored.  The  flight  to  an  ideal 
realm,  which  is  so  strongly  marked  in  this  play,  is 
specially  to  be  noticed  since  it  is  often  repeated  by 
Shakespeare  under  diverse  shapes,  and  must  be  re- 
garded not  merely  as  one  of  his  artistic  devices,  but 
as  a  living  experience  of  his  spiritual  life. 

Next  in  order  we  may  consider  The  Taming  of 
the  Shrew,  whose  action  is  likewise  placed  in  a 
framework  of  illusion  which  is  supposed  to  be  the 
product  of  intoxication,  not  of  fairy-land.  Before 
the  drunken  tinker  Christopher  Sly  is  played  a 
high  Shakespearian  Comedy  of  intrigue  whose  scene 
is  set  in  Italy.  Here  accordingly  are  found  the 
poet's  two  main  dramatic  elements — the  elevated 
cultural  life  of  the  South  and  the  humble  rude  life 


378  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFEDBAMA. 

of  the  NoY-th— in  the  form  of  a  play  within  a  play. 
Thus  the  function  of  the  drama  is  to  make  ''the 
beggar  forget  himself"  through  the  illusion  of  be- 
ing a  ''mighty  lord",  and  he  comes  to  believe  what 
is  told  him: 

These  fifteen  years  you  have  been  in  a  dream ; 
Or  when  you  waked,  so  waked  as  if  you  slept — 

dwelling  in  a  kind  of  double  consciousness. 

As  to  the  traveled  life  of  Shakespeare,  The  Tam- 
ing of  the  Shrew  contains  some  of  the  best  evidence 
of  his  having  been  in  Italy.  The  familiarity  here 
shown  with  Italian  localities,  customs,  characters, 
even  household  furniture,  could  hardly  be  acquired 
through  any  other  means  than  personal  experience. 
For  a  little  instance,  I  believe  Shakespeare  caught 
up  that  very  Italian  conversational  word  hasta 
(enough),  from  its  home-land  where  it  is  so 
common. 

The  third  drama  belonging  to  this  early  group, 
and  the  most  Italianized  of  all  his  works,  is  the 
well-known  Merchant  of  Venice.  While  the  dream 
is  not  directly  introduced,  the  setting  is  now  a  kind 
of  dream-city,  which  still  remains  one  of  the  pe- 
culiar charms  of  Venice  upon  the  stranger.  The 
date  hovers  about  1595-6,  according  to  most  ex- 
positors, and  suggests  the  poet 's  Italian  time,  which 
here  shows  its  finest  flowering.  But  that  which 
makes  the  play  eternal  is  its  two  characters,  Portia 
the  mediatorial  woman,  and  Shylock  the  Jew,  who 
is  transformed  from  the  Barabas  of  Marlowe,  the 


COMEDIES  379 

prime  poetic  genius  still  showing  himself  an  ele- 
mental power  in  Shakespeare's  development. 

Thus  the  reader  is  made  to  feel  that  The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice  overflows  with  the  poet's  own  self 
at  his  happiest.  Portia  certainly  gives  the  fairest 
picture  of  his  love-life  at  this  time  realized  in  the 
woman,  while  Shylock  brings  to  the  highest  and 
purest  point  his  Marlowese  gift  of  expression. 
Then  the  play  in  its  atmosphere  and  color  seems  the 
very  bloom  of  his  Italian  memories. 

Middle  Group.  Here  we  place  two  Comedies  of 
Shakespeare  who  has  now  reached  his  Falstaffian 
mood  of  creation — Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  and 
Twelfth  Night.  They  belong  to  the  time  of  the  Lan- 
castrian Trilogy,  Henry  IV  in  its  two  parts  and 
Henry  V,  which  were  written  during  the  years 
1597-9.  Thus  the  Comedies  and  the  Histories  of 
the  present  Epoch  interweave  at  this  single  point 
in  a  common  character,  which  is  comic,  and  by  such 
agreement  bring  to  light  their  one  underlying  prin- 
ciple, which  has  been  already  designated  as  Com- 
edy. Falstaff  is  really  the  dominating  figure,  if  not 
the  hero  of  the  five  mentioned  plays.  He  repre- 
sents the  underworld  of  sense  challenging  and  out- 
doing the  overworld  of  spirit,  perverting  the  same 
to  the  opposite  of  itself  and  so  making  it  comic. 
From  the  prevailing  realm  of  illusion,  or  the  ideal 
dream-life  of  the  foregoing  group,  we  are  now  to 
enter  the  Comedy  of  sense-life,  very  real  and  often 
gross  in  feature  and  utterance. 

The  first  play  here  to  be  noted  is  The  Merry 


380  SB AKESFE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Wives  of  Windsor,  to  which  Falstaff  has  been  di- 
rectly transferred  from  Henry  IV  without  a  change 
of  name.  Tradition  has  handed  down  that  the 
work  was  written  ''in  fourteen  days",  by  order  of 
Queen  Elizabeth,  who  wished  to  enjoy  Falstaff  in 
love,  or  to  see  how  the  old  sensualist  would  conduct 
himself  toward  married  women  in  a  small  town. 
The  play  is  based  upon  Shakespeare's  observations 
in  three  different  localities — Windsor,  liondon,  and 
especially  Stratford.  All  these  places  are  in  Eng- 
land, which  can  have  no  high-toned  Italian  group 
speaking  in  elegant  blank-verse.  Prosaic  English 
common  folks  furnish  the  characters  as  well  as  the 
social  environment.  The  Southern  cultural  life  is 
quite  left  out — the  only  instance  in  all  these  Come- 
dies. To  be  sure  Italy  may  have  furnished  the 
leading  incidents  and  the  main  plot,  which  are  said 
to  be  derived  from  the  Italian  Straparola;  but  the 
names,  places,  and  persons  are  tricked  out  in  Eng- 
lish home-spun. 

Still  the  real  central  experience  which  gives 
vividness  and  humor  to  the  play,  springs  from  the 
poet's  early  life  in  his  native  town,  Stratford, 
whose  taverns  and  tap-rooms,  more  than  thirty  in 
number,  could  easily  duplicate  the  whole  reveling 
crew  headed  by  Falstaff.  In  that  town,  too,  Shake- 
speare saw  and  knew  the  Welsh  schoolmaster,  and 
doubtless  recited  lessons  under  his  ferule;  Sir 
Hugh  could  hardly  belong  to  Windsor,  but  nat- 
urally  to  the  borderland  near  Wales,  where  lies 
Stratford.     Hence  it  comes  that  on  certain  lines 


COMEDIES  381 

this  Merry  Wives  may  be  deemed  the  most  bio- 
graphic externally,  though  not  internally,  of  all 
the  poet's  Comedies. 

The  second  play  of  the  present  group  illustrating 
the  Comedy  of  sense-life,  or  of  physical  appetites 
is  Twelfth  Night,  whose  most  characteristic  feature 
is  the  noisy  set  of  Falstaffian  revelers,  quite  like 
those  of  Eastcheap  and  of  Windsor,  though  Sir 
John  here  becomes  Sir  Toby.  Moreover  the  scene 
is  not  set  now  in  a  town  tavern  or  a  city  bar-room, 
but  in  the  private  household  of  a  high  lady,  the 
wealthy  niece  of  Sir  Toby,  named  Olivia,  round 
whom  as  center  spins  the  action.  There  is  the 
upper  line  of  personages,  Italian  or  Italianized; 
but  the  dramatic  stress  is  placed  upon  the  native 
English  crowd  of  wild  merry-makers,  whose  doings 
take  up  quite  two-thirds  of  the  play. 

Though  the  poet  may  have  intended  to  make  Sir 
Toby  the  leading  character,  the  steward  Malvolio 
has  really  usurped  the  first  place,  so  that  the  play 
is  sometimes  titled  Malvolio,  as  if  he  were  its  hero. 
And  probably  he  is  the  most  original  personage  of 
the  lot,  revealing  a  special  relation  to  the  time.  For 
the  poet  here  takes  a  side-glance  at  Puritanism,  the 
great  spiritual  movement  of  the  age,  in  which  we 
hold  emphatically  that  he  shared,  must  have  shared, 
in  order  to  be  the  time's  supreme  poet.  Undoubt- 
edly he  could  laugh  at  the  eccentricities  of  Puri- 
tanism while  believing  in  its  true  values,  as  for 
example,  its  revived  conscience.  Thus,  to  take  a 
modern  instance,  Emerson  ridiculed  and  even  pub- 


382  SHAEESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DEAMA 

liely  spoke  against  Emersonianism  in  its  excess,  for 
the  support  of  his  own  right  doctrine.  As  this  play 
and  this  character  are  often  cited  to  prove  Shake- 
speare's personal  hostility  to  the  Puritanic  spirit, 
we  may  briefly  look  at  the  supposedly  antagonistic 
passages. 

It  is  Maria,  Malvolio's  bitter  foe  in  the  house- 
hold, who  first  says  of  him,  ' '  sometimes  he  is  a  kind 
of  Puritan ' ',  not  because  of  his  religion,  which  does 
not  directly  appear  anywhere,  but  because  of  the 
strict  fulfilment  of  his  office  in  restraining  the 
drunken  riot,  waste,  and  uproar  of  the  revelers, 
which  she,  for  her  own  ends,  would  tolerate.  Such 
was  certainly  the  duty  of  Malvolio  as  steward  of 
Olivia's  household.  But  this  same  Maria  takes 
back  her  own  words  a  little  later  when  she  says: 
''the  devil  a  Puritan  that  he  is,  or  anything  con- 
stantly but  a  time-pleaser ",  an  expression  which 
not  only  denies  Malvolio's  Puritanism,  but  on  the 
contrary  opposes  him  to  it  as  regards  character. 
These  two  contradictory  passages,  though  often 
quoted  to  show  Shakespeare 's  hate  of  the  Puritans, 
may  well  suggest  rather  the  reverse.  For  the  stew- 
ard in  moral  worth  is  the  best  person  of  the  lot. 
To  be  sure  Shakespeare's  good-humored  protest  in 
favor  of  moderate  enjoyment  against  Puritanic- 
austerity  may  be  heard  in  the  well  known  dictum : 
*'Dost  thou  think,  because  thou  art  virtuous,  that 
there  shall  be  no  more  cakes  and  ale?" 

Not  the  most  winning  character  in  the  play  but 
the  most  conscientious,   the  most  dutiful   is  this 


COMEDIES  383 

Malvolio,  and  his  mistress  Olivia  recognizes  his 
value.  But  just  that  recognition  of  his  moral  merit 
calls  forth  his  weakness,  his  folly,  his  comic  foible ; 
Olivia's  gratitude  for  righteous  service  he  mistakes 
for  love,  and  thus  becomes  a  subject  for  comic  retri- 
bution through  the  unrighteous  revelers.  But  this 
so-called  Puritanism  is  not  the  ground  of  his  pen- 
alty;  nor  has  he  been  guilty  of  wrong  or  sin,  but 
of  a  ridiculous  absurdity  sprung  of  his  ' '  self-love ' ', 
which  possessed  him  in  spite  of  or  just  through  his 
overstrained  moralism. 

Third  Group.  We  now  come  to  the  third  and 
last  group  of  Shakespeare's  Comedies,  composed 
during  his  Happy  Sexennium.  The  transition  is 
somewhat  striking,  whereof  the  main  point  is  this: 
Falstaff  and  his  jolly  sensual  band  of  roisterers 
vanish,  and  their  place  is  taken  by  quite  a  different 
set  of  fun-makers.  The  tavern  and  its  inmates 
which  have  been  insistently  present  in  five  plays 
(two  Comedies  and  three  Histories),  are  henceforth 
to  pass  off  the  scene,  and  other  social  centers  of  the 
comic  characters  appear.  So  we  may  say  that  the 
Falstaffian  world  has  spent  ieself,  having  played 
its  part  in  the  poet's  Life-drama. 

The  present  Group,  as  we  construe  it,  contains 
three  Comedies  which  we  set  down  in  their  order: 
As  You  Like  It,  Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  All's 
Well  That  Ends  Well.  The  composition  of  these 
plays  hovers  about  1599-1601,  that  is,  after  the 
Falstaffian  Group. 

Noticeable  is  the  fact  that  in  these  three  plays 


384  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

the  comic  spirit  begins  to  abate;  a  serious,  even  a 
dark  and  melancholy  strain  begins  to  get  more 
prominent  and  distinctive,  though  they  remain 
Comedies.  Indeed  Tragedy  starts  to  peep  out  of 
the  poetic  treatment,  undoubtedly  reflecting  the 
present  mood  of  the  author,  and  hinting  whither 
he  is  moving.  Especially  is  such  a  change  observ- 
able in  the  lower  native  or  English  line  of  char 
acters,  in  which  Shakespeare  shows  himself  most 
distinctly  and  naturally  at  home. 

Still  the  more  aristocratic  Italian  line  of  person- 
ages representing  the  Italianized  strain  of  the  poet, 
and  indicated  by  the  poetical  form  as  well  as  by  the 
theatrical  setting,  is  kept  up  in  all  three  plays,  and 
voices  the  elevated,  genteel,  cultural  element  of  the 
social  order. 

As  the  first  member  of  this  Group  we  take  As 
You  Like  It,  whose  general  sweep  embraces  a  flight 
from  social  wrong  to  the  primitive  idyllic  life  of  the 
Forest  of  Arden.  Here  is  the  grand  curative  prin- 
ciple which  heals  the  world  of  wrong,  and  then  re- 
stores the  fugitives.  Very  profound  and  suggestive 
runs  the  undercurrent  of  this  favorite  Comedy, 
which  implies  that  human  society  may  become  per- 
verted in  itself,  and  destructive  of  its  pufpose, 
whereupon  is  to  be  applied  the  remedy!  Thus  the 
Forest  of  Arden  is  remedial,  restorative,  a  kind  of 
spiritual  sanatorium  both  for  the  individual  and 
the  institution. 

Still  there  is  one  individual  who  refuses  to  be 
cured,  who  seemingly  cannot  be  restored  out  of  his 


COMEDIES  385 

negation  and  pessimism.  This  is  the  melancholy 
Jaques,  who  is  portrayed  with  such  decision  and 
directness  that  the  reader  can  hardly  help  identify- 
ing him  with  Shakespeare  himself  in  one  of  his 
overcast  or  cynical  moods.  Moreover  Jaques  in  a 
number  of  points  is  the  precursor  and  prophecy  of 
the  coming  tragic  Hamlet,  the  melancholy  Dane, 
who  is  endowed  more  deeply  and  variously  with  the 
same  world-gloom. 

Next  after  the  foregoing  play  we  would  put 
Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  since  treatment  and  con- 
ception are  growing  darker,  though  the  entire  ac- 
tion still  conforms  to  a  comedy.  The  villain  now 
appears  and  victimizes  the  innocent  young  lady, 
Hero,  by  blasting  her  good-name  and  her  hope  of 
marriage,  till  she  be  rescued  by  a  humorous  variety 
of  instrumentalities.  Here  again  is  shown  the 
world  of  wrong,  though  there  is  no  flight  to  an  idyl- 
lic life  for  restoration.  The  Falstaffian  band  of 
revelers,  once  so  prominent,  has  dwindled  down  to 
the  stupid  officials,  who  through  sheer  imbecility 
render  an  important  service.  On  the  other  hand 
Benedict  and  Beatrice,  belonging  to  the  high-toned 
set,  spend  their  bright  sallies  upon  each  other  till 
their  unmarriageable  wit  undoes  itself  and  becomes 
comic,  ending  in  the  mutual  self-surrender  of  love 
and  marriage.  Thus  we  see  in  this  play  not  merely 
the  wit  of  comedy  but  the  comedy  of  wit,  its  ab- 
surdity and  final  self-negation  into  its  opposite. 
Verily  the  poet's  comic  world  is  showing  signs  of 
evanishment,  and  his  Happy  Sexennium  is  not  so 


386  SEAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

happy  as  it  once  was,  telling  such  a  forecast  of  the 
coming  close. 

Still  one  more  play,  All's  Well  That  Ends  Well, 
is  to  be  assigned  to  this  third  Group  of  Comedies 
though  it  is  far  more  serious  than  comic,  present- 
ing as  it  does,  a  wrenching  social  problem  with  a 
very  problematical  solution.  It  winds  up,  however, 
in  triumph  and  reconciliation  for  the  daring 
woman,  the  wont-bursting  Helena,  the  grand  defier 
of  her  sex's  ultimate  tradition.  On  the  whole  hers 
rises  up  the  strongest  feminine  will  found  in  all 
Shakespeare,  more  massive  even  than  that  of  Lady 
Macbeth,  whose  mind  breaks  down  under  her  deed. 
Helena  is  the  culmination  or  rather  the  farthest 
extreme  of  a  line  of  mighty-hearted  female  charac- 
ters whose  lofty  summits  overtop  all  these  Comedies 
— Portia,  Rosalind,  Helena — who  grapple  with  and 
surmount  fate's  sorest  opposition,  in  order  to  get 
the  man  they  love.  So  this  Helena  may  be  deemed 
the  female  Titan  of  Shakespeare,  whom  he  hoists 
up  as  a  colossal  figure  on  the  apex  of  the  completed 
temple  of  his  Comedies.  The  deepest  contradiction 
of  her  sex  she  challenges  and  overcomes  in  her  way ; 
her  very  womanhood  she  stakes  in  order  to  win 
womanhood's  prize — love.  And  all  this  is  done  by 
her  not  through  sudden  impulse  but  with  the 
subtlest  far-reaching  reflection.  On  the  whole  she 
may  be  acclaimed  Shakespeare's  greatest  darer, 
masculine  or  feminine. 

So  it  comes  that  she  cannot  be  called  a  pleasant 
character — she  is  too  womanly  gigantic,  too  hu- 


COMEDIES  387 

manly  threatening  for  us  poor  mortals.  And  such 
a  play  Shakespeare,  the  expert  playwright,  must 
have  known  would  be  disagreeable  to  his  audience, 
quite  unpresentable — and  still  he  composed  it,  not 
for  money  or  fame — for  what  then  ?  His  genius  had 
to  write  itself  out  to  its  fulfilment.  Shakespeare 
made  this  drama  for  his  own  self-expression,  for 
his  fulfilled  Life-drama,  and  it  is  not  the  only  one 
of  that  kind  in  his  works.  Rounding  his  evolution 
he  had  run  up  against  the  grand  antinomy  between 
means  and  end  cleaving  human  conduct:  which 
fact  is  suggested  by  the  title  of  the  play,  which 
makes  all  well  if  it  but  end  well.  Can  sin  ever  be 
the  right  instrument  to  produce  virtue?  For  here 
is  a  case  ''where  both  (man  and  woman)  sin  not 
and  yet  a  sinful  fact ' '.  The  problem  of  conscience 
which  so  often  crops  out  along  the  entire  course  of 
Shakespeare's  Life-drama  now  turns  up  in  this 
shape :  Can  conscience  be  violated  in  order  to  ful- 
fil the  behest  of  conscience!  Rosalind  also  speaks 
of  ''points  in  the  which  women  give  the  lie  to  their 
consciences".  The  function  of  Helena  is  to  me- 
diate her  souPs  deepest  contradiction,  and  justify 
the  daring  proverb  AlVs  Well  That  Ends  Well. 
Did  it  ever  rise  in  Shakespeare 's  own  experience  to 
witness  the  feat  and  the  character  of  this  unparal- 
leled Helena,  mightier  in  will,  more  demi-godlike 
than  her  far-famed  namesake  of  Troy? 

Here  then  we  close  the  series  of  eight  Com'3dies 
in  whose  three  Groups  we  observe  a  distinct  develop- 
ment of  the  poet.    On  the  whole  they  put  the  woman 


388  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

at  the  center  of  their  world,  of  which  the  mistakes 
and  ills  and  conflicts  she  is  to  reconcile  through  her 
ultimate  nature,  her  love.  The  man  in  these  Come- 
dies plays  a  secondary  role,  even  the  man  whom 
she  chooses.  Herein  the  poet  drew  from  his  own 
early  experience  during  his  Stratford  days;  we 
have  already  emphasized  the  superiority  of  his 
mother  to  his  father  in  his  home-life.  Indeed  one 
questions  why  Shakespeare  did  not  name  these 
Comedies  after  the  leading  female  characters,  for 
instance  giving  to  The  Merchant  of  Venice  the  title 
of  Portia.  Was  it  some  prejudice  in  the  man  or  in 
the  time?  But  we  are  never  to  forget  that  on 
Shakespeare's  stage  women's  parts  were  taken  by 
male  actors  or  by  ''squeaking  boys";  so  it  seems 
the  titles  also  had  to  be  disguised.  Still  even  the 
listless  listener  would  be  likely  to  detect  the  dis- 
cord of  a  male  voice  intoning  the  female  love-rap- 
tures of  Cleopatra. 

Here  then  the  poet  brings  to  a  close  his  dis- 
tintively  Comic  Epoch,  having  expressed  himself  in 
eight  Comedies,  which  belong  to  his  Apprenticeship, 
showing  still  his  partial  imitation  and  appropria- 
tion of  Italian  sources  blent  with  his  strong  native 
originality.  He  might  have  gone  on  writing  pleas- 
antly and  easily  such  Comedies  for  the  rest  of  his 
life,  if  an  altogether  new  mood,  or  rather  some 
mighty  spiritual  compulsion  had  not  come  over  him, 
involving  a  totally  different,  in  fact  the  opposite 
form  of  self-expression.  We  are  soon  to  see  Shake- 
speare tower  gigantically  to  be  the  world 's  supreme 


HISTOBIES  389 

tragic  poet,  of  which  change  we  are  yet  to  probe  to 

the  wellhead. 

The  foregoing  account  of  these  eight  Comedies 
seeks  not  to  give  any  complete  explication  of  their 
structure,  style,  and  multitudinous  characters. 
They  are  considered  briefly  and  simply  from  one 
point  of  view:  their  place  in  the  evolution  of 
Shakespeare's  total  personality.  The  inquisitive 
reader  will  naturally  consult  somewhat  of  the  vast 
Shakespearian  literature  which  has  busied  itself 
with  these  plays,  but  which  lays  its  chief  stress 
upon  the  work  of  the  man  rather  than  upon  the 
man's  own  selfhood  in  his  work.  (I  may  be  per- 
mitted here  to  whisper  parenthetically  to  my  fel- 
low-student, that  if  he  wishes  to  see  my  much 
fuller  exposition  of  these  eight  Comedies — with 
emphasis  upon  their  objective  side  rather  than  their 
personal — he  will  find  it  in  my  book  titled  The 
Shakespearian  Drama — Comedies), 

II. 

Histories. 

We  are  now  to  grapple  with  the  three  English 
Historical  plays,  which  belong  to  the  present 
Epoch;  and  which  constitute  one  closely  interre- 
lated work  whose  emphatic  unity  calls  up  the  desig- 
nation of  it  as  a  Trilogy,  or  one  drama  in  three 
Parts.  These  are  the  First  and  Second  Henry  IV, 
and  Henry  V.  Moreover  the  whole  Trilogy  was 
written  in  the  couple  of  years  lying  between  1597 


390  8HAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

and  1599,  at  one  stretch  of  time,  and  under  one 
push  of  conception  and  inspiration.  The  style,  the 
basic  thought,  and  largely  the  characters  remain 
the  same  from  start  to  finish,  though  the  excellence 
is  by  no  means  equal ;  indeed  there  is  a  kind  of  de- 
scent in  merit  from  the  first  play  till  the  last. 

In  like  manner  the  present  Trilogy  bears  the 
stamp  of  this  Epoch  on  account  of  the  stress  which 
it  puts  upon  the  spirit's  recovery  and  reconcilia- 
tion, after  a  time  of  conflict  and  scission.  Undoubt- 
edly it  reveals  socially  destructive  agencies  at  work, 
but  it  shows  them  overcome  at  the  close,  and  thus 
it  is  essentially  a  Comedy,  both  in  each  of  its  three 
several  Parts  and  in  its  totality.  Here  we  are  to 
see  that  this  Trilogy  of  English  Histories  is  at  its 
deepest  intergrown  and  unified  with  the  foregoing 
line  of  eight  Comedies.  In  each  kind,  in  the  His- 
tories as  well  as  in  the  Comedies,  the  outcome  is  a 
reconciled  lot  both  of  the  individual  and  the  insti- 
tution, even  if  a  dark  tragic  streak  now  and  then 
rises  to  the  surface  and  interweaves  itself  till  it  be 
somehow  mediated  in  the  final  harmony.  Such  was 
Shakespeare's  characteristic  mood  during  this 
Epoch  of  six  or  seven  years;  hence  we  have  chris- 
tened it  his  Happy  Sexennium. 

A  word  about  the  use  of  words  in  this  connection. 
The  mindful  reader  will  recall  that  we  have  al- 
ready had  an  historical  Trilogy,  indeed  a  Lancas- 
trian Trilogy  in  its  three  Parts,  named  after  Henry 
VI,  son  of  Henry  V.  But  that  was  a  very  dif- 
ferent production  in  style,  thought,  and  maturity 


HISTOBIES  391 

from  the  present  one ;  especially  the  mental  stage 
of  the  poet  creating  it  was  on  a  number  of  points 
quite  the  opposite.  Then  Shakespeare  wrought 
madly  fermenting  in  his  Collaborative  Epoch,  be- 
ing also  lashed  to  emulation  by  the  Titanic  genius 
of  Marlowe.  That  was  some  ten  years  past,  during 
which  time  our  poet  has  undergone  much  experi- 
ence, and  received  from  it  a  mighty  development 
which  has  been  already  outlined. 

Still  it  is  well  to  stop  long  enough  to  emphasize 
by  way  of  contrast  that  Shakespeare 's  first  Trilogy 
of  English  Histories,  Henry  VI,  mirrors  him  as 
reveling  in  bloody,  death-dealing  Tragedy,  not  in 
happily  ended  Comedy — as  being  the  embryonic 
Shakespeare  in  wild  fermentation,  not  yet  evolved 
into  his  reconciled  mood  of  dramatic  creation, 
which  is  the  characteristic  strain  of  the  present 
Epoch,  and  which  culminates  in  this  second  Lan- 
castrian Trilogy  of  English  Histories.  And  we  may 
add  the  reflection  that  the  earlier  Trilogy  his- 
torically is  the  later  biographically,  so  that  he  wrote 
these  two  groups  of  plays  backwards  in  time  though 
forwards  in  life,  according  to  his  own  spirit's  ex- 
perience, for  whose  sake  he  dared  reverse  the  forth- 
right march  of  History.  Hence  Shakespeare's 
youthful  fate  chose  to  depict  the  fate  of  the  son 
Henry  VI  long  before  he  did  that  of  the  father 
Henry  V,  molding  the  brittle  body  of  old  Time 
into  a  new  shape  congruent  with  his  own  inner 
evolution. 

Undoubtedly  this  Trilogy  connects  back  both  in 


392  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

History  and  in  Shakespeare  with  the  play  of  Rich- 
ard II,  which  starts  its  leading  motives  as  well  as 
prophesies  its  coming  and  its  conclusion.  Hence 
most  interpreters  not  without  reason  make  Eichard 
II  the  overture  to  the  foregoing  Trilogy  and  call 
the  related  four  dramas  the  Lancastrian  Tetralogy. 
At  present,  however,  our  purpose  is  to  stress  the 
epochal  difference  between  these  two  compositions 
in  spite  of  their  close  historic  connection,  and  to 
probe  to  the  meaning  of  this  difference  for  the  life 
of  the  poet.  Richard  II  is  decidedly  Italianized  in 
style  and  soul,  discoursing  sweet  sentiment  even 
to  the  point  of  sentimentality,  while  the  Trilogy  is 
stoutly  and  wholly  English  in  spirit  and  expression. 
Richard  II  has  no  comic  vein,  and  no  prose,  while 
the  Trilogy,  has  an  overplus  of  both,  culminating  in 
Falstaff.  Then  what  a  difference  between  them  in 
the  might  and  the  certainty  of  characterisation  and 
of  language! 

But  the  deepest,  widest,  most  essential  diversity 
which  separates  the  two  works  springs  out  of  the 
supreme  change  in  the  attitude  of  the  poet  toward 
his  environing  institutional  world,  especially  State 
and  Church.  Hitherto  he  has  been  a  protester 
against  if  not  a  defier  of  the  existent  social  order, 
but  now  he  turns  about  and  becomes  a  conformist 
and  a  conservative,  which  is  his  part  in  the  present 
Trilogy.  Not  so  sudden  has  been  the  transforma- 
tion, since  he  has  had  three  years  and  more  for 
meditating  and  fulfilling  his  spirit's  grand  meta- 
morphosis.   From  his  anti-institutional  trend  along 


EISTOBIES  393 

with  Marlowe  and  his  wild  lawless  set  of  fellow- 
poets,  he  has  been  strangely  transmuted  into  an  in- 
stitutional man  and  poet.  Thus  Shakespeare  has 
bridged  the  chasm  across  from  his  previous  youth- 
ful time  of  spiritual  opposition  to  the  prescribed 
order  of  society,  and  has  entered  upon  his  new 
forthcoming  Epoch  which  accepts  and  upholds  the 
transmitted  establishment  both  political  and  re- 
ligious, as  this  is  poetically  set  forth  in  the  career 
of  the  two  Henrys  of  the  present  Trilogy. 

It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  Queen  Elizabeth  re- 
garded Shakepeare's  Richard  II,  which  stages 
vividly  the  dethronement  and  demise  of  a  monarch, 
as  a  revolutionary  play,  and  forbade  its  presenta- 
tion before  the  people  at  a  time  of  threatened  pop- 
ular insurrection,  in  which  by  the  way  some  of  the 
poet  *s  patrons  and  high-born  friends  were  involved. 
But  why  select  Richard  II  for  royal  disapproval 
when  all  of  Shakespeare's  previous  English-His- 
torical plays,  five  in  number  and  covering  quite  two 
Epochs  of  his  total  Life-drama,  show  the  sovereigns 
of  England  called  to  account,  unkinged,  and  even 
deprived  of  life  by  violence?  Such  had  been  the 
nature  of  his  dramatic  contribution  in  the  historic 
field  up  to  the  present.  Altogether  he  has  hitherto 
depicted  four  English  Kings  dragged  down  from 
royalty  and  slain :  such  was  his  selection  of  themes, 
which  gives  an  indication  of  his  spirit.  But  mark 
now  his  change :  the  two  monarchs  of  this  Trilogy, 
the  two  Henrys,  triumph  over  conspiracy  and  re- 
bellion, pacify  the  land,  and  conquer  the  foreign 


394  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

foe.  And  they  die  in  their  beds  at  peace  externally, 
if  not  internally. 

Here  we  may  also  take  note  of  the  transforma- 
tion in  Shakespeare's  poetical  associates.  The  old 
set  of  dramatists  headed  by  Marlowe  have  passed 
off  the  stage  of  life  in  their  own  life's  tragedy, 
which  has  been  witnessed  and  taken  to  heart  by 
Shakespeare,  who  is  now  about  the  sole  survivor 
of  that  daring  denying  group,  once  so  defiant  of 
custom,  law,  and  institution.  The  lesson  of  their 
fate  he  has  learned,  and  he  proposes  to  utter  his 
vast  new  experience  in  his  own  native  form,  which 
we  may  see  in  the  present  dramatic  Trilogy.  For 
the  poet's  intensest  drive  is  toward  self-expression, 
giving  voice  to  what  he  has  struggled  through  in 
the  deepest  depths  of  life.  Hence  we  may  say  that 
his  time  of  Storm  and  Stress  is  now  transcended, 
having  evolved  him  into  his  reconciled  Epoch,  his 
Happy  Sexennium. 

But  behold,  another  poetical  environment  gath- 
ers about  him,  very  different  from  that  early  band 
like  Kyd,  Peele,  Greene,  and  the  rest.  Shakespeare 
is  now  the  center,  the  acknowledged  head  of  the 
drama,  no  longer  the  imitator  but  the  imitated. 
This  new  set  of  fellow-dramatists,  of  whom  he  is 
the  supreme  luminary,  and  who  shine  largely  to- 
day through  his  light,  may  be  headed  by  Ben  Jon- 
son  as  first,  then  followed  by  Marston,  Chapman, 
Middleton,  and  others.  They  constitute  the  truly 
Shakespearian  group  with  its  peculiar  development 
and  character,  stamping  the  Elizabethan  age  with 


HISTOBIES  395 

the  sovereign  seal  of  the  world's  literature.  Some 
recent  Shakespearian  criticism  has  dug  up  a  speck 
of  news  concerning  the  petty  jealousies  and  feuds 
among  this  later  group  of  poets,  in  whose  tiny  ani- 
mosities the  great  Shakespeare  is  supposed  to  have 
become  embroiled.  Very  dubious  is  the  whole  argu- 
ment, and  even  if  proved,  it  would  hardly  be  worth 
its  ink.  No  doubt  Shakespeare  alludes  to  a  very 
able  rival  singer  in  his  sonnets;  but  the  poet  who 
alone  might  be  worthy  of  such  a  transcendent  rec- 
ognition  has  been  already  indicated — Marlowe. 

Another  cardinal  distinction  is  here  to  be  pon- 
dered: in  the  Histories  it  is  the  man  who  stands 
emphatically  in  the  foreground  and  is  celebrated 
as  the  hero;  while  in  the  Comedies  the  woman  is 
put  to  the  top,  and  pedestaled  over  tlie  man  as  the 
heroine.  Thus  it  would  seem  that  these  two  kinds 
of  dramas  are  sexed  in  their  way ;  Comedy  here  is 
feminine  at  its  best,  while  History  is  dominantly 
masculine.  What  does  this  mean?  Shakespeare 
probably  regarded  the  woman  as  queen  of  domestic 
life,  which  is  the  main  sphere  of  his  Comedies ;  but 
to  the  man  chiefly  he  assigned  political  life,  which 
is  the  leading  theme  of  his  Histories.  Still  else- 
where and  at  other  times  Shakespeare  has  limned 
us  in  strong  outlines,  the  political  woman  as  Queen 
Margaret  in  Henry  VI,  and  Lady  Macbeth,  and  per- 
chance pathetic  Constance.  But  in  his  present 
mood,  that  of  the  Happy  Sexennium,  he  in  general 
makes  the  woman  the  deeply  reconciling  character 
of  the  discords  and  conflicts  of  the  Family;  while 


396  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DRAMA 

the  man  is  to  meet  and  to  overcome  inner  scission 
and  open  rebellion  in  the  State.  Thus  the  two 
separate  sexes  he  enthrones  in  the  two  separate  in- 
stitutions, Family  and  State,  assigning  to  them 
respectively  his  two  art-forms,  Comedy  and  His- 
tory. 

At  first  it  causes  some  wonderment  that  Shake- 
speare, lover  of  the  woman-soul,  especially  during 
his  Happy  Sexennium,  should  reduce  to  such  rela- 
tive insignificance  the  lofty  ladies  of  this  Trilogy. 
There  is  hardly  a  pronounced  character  among 
them,  though  we  catch  pretty  passing  glimpses  of 
several  grand  dames,  most  rememberable  of  whom 
perhaps  is  Hotspur's  wife  with  her  fondling  threat : 
^'I'll  break  thy  little  finger,  Harry".  Strangely 
the  realest  woman  in  love  does  not  now  speak 
English  at  all,  being  the  daughter  of  the  Welsh 
chieftain,  Owen  Glendower,  who  seemingly  has  not 
allowed  her  to  learn  that  hated  Saxon  speech  which 
he,  however,  both  knows  and  sings  as  a  poet.  So 
she  has  to  gabble  even  on  the  stage  a  foreign  dialect 
to  her  English  husband,  Mortimer,  who  cannot  un- 
derstand her,  dolefully  sighing:  ''My  wife  can 
speak  no  English,  I  no  Welsh".  Again  we  cannot 
help  thinking  that  here  is  another  transcript  of 
Shakespeare's  own  youthful  experience  in  his  bor- 
der home-town,  the  somewhat  bilingual  Stratford. 
Then  the  next  most  prized  woman,  Katharine, 
speaks  a  hobbling  English-French  or  a  yet  lamer 
French-English. 

Queen   Elizabeth,   that   haughty,    self-asserting, 


FIBST    PABT    OF    HENET    IV.  397 

all-exacting  woman,  could  find  little  compliment  for 
herself  and  her  dignity  in  the  poet's  treatment  of 
these  high  courtly  dames  of  the  present  Trilogy. 
This  fact  may  also  mirror  the  present  mood  of 
Shakespeare  toward  Elizabeth,  between  whom  and 
some  of  the  poet's  noble  friends,  especially 
Southampton,  had  started  during  these  years  a 
rupture  which  ended  a  little  later  in  downright  re- 
volt— whereof  something  more  in  the  future. 
Meanwhile  Dame  Quickly,  queen  of  the  Eastcheap 
pothouse,  holds  her  reveling  court  in  all  its  under- 
worldly  splendor  throughout  the  entire  Trilogy, 
being  its  sovereign  woman. 

The  First  Part  of  Henry  IV.  The  best  and  most 
popular  play  of  this  Trilogy,  and  with  good  reason : 
it  depicts  the  clearest-cut  and  largest  characters,  it 
is  written  in  the  poet's  happiest  style,  it  has  more 
unity  of  action  and  thought  than  either  of  the  other 
Parts.  Indeed  it  would  doubtless  rank  with  the 
greatest  six  or  seven  among  the  author's  entire 
works.  But  the  point  which  we  would  at  present 
stress  about  it,  is  that  it  contains  in  its  happenings 
more  numerous  and  significant  glimpses  of  the  per- 
sonal Shakespeare  than  any  other  single  one  of  his 
dramas.  Hence  we  may  well  deem  it  his  most  auto- 
biographic play,  revealing  much  about  himself 
when  the  dramatic  disguise  is  peeped  under.  From 
this  viewpoint  we  shall  take  several  glances  at  or 
rather  beneath  its  somewhat  veiled  events. 

(1)     The  supreme  political  or  historic  fact  of 


398  SHAKE8FE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

this  drama  is  England's  desperate  struggle  with 
rebellion.  Everywhere  we  hear  the  notes  of  prepa- 
ration of  civil  authority  against  its  threatened  over- 
throw. The  nation  is  summoned  to  defend  itself 
against  its  own  dissolution.  The  rebellious  spirit 
of  the  time  taints  the  one  supreme  family  of  the 
North,  the  Percys,  which  spirit  must  be  eradicated 
before  any  public  peace  is  possible.  The  prota- 
gonists of  these  two  contending  energies  are  Prince 
Henry  and  Hotspur,  of  whom  the  latter  perishes 
and  with  himself  his  cause.  Thus  the  poet  in  his 
dramatic  way  affirms  the  wrong  of  revolution  and 
its  undoing  along  with  that  of  its  valiant  but  mis- 
guided supporters. 

Now  the  emphatic  matter  at  this  point  is  that 
Shakespeare  in  his  previous  Lancastrian  play, 
Richard  II,  has  shown  quite  the  opposite  trend, 
namely  toward  upholding  the  right  of  revolution. 
There  the  king  is  dethroned  and  slain,  and  a  tri- 
umphant rebel  becomes  monarch.  Undoubtedly 
this  is  the  course  of  history;  but  why  did  the  poet 
successively  choose  such  diverse  themes?  They  in- 
dicate the  great  change  in  his  spirit's  development, 
which  took  place  in  the  three  years  or  so  which  lie 
between  these  two  compositions,  as  has  been  already 
set  forth.  Shakespeare  himself  in  his  life's  deep- 
est experience  has  turned  from  being  a  rebel  into 
the  stout  maintainer  of  what  is  established.  Thus 
we  stress  the  pivotal  transition  from  revolt  to  ac- 
ceptance, from  the  right  to  the  wrong  of  revolution 
in  the  Apprenticeship  of  the  poet,  from  the  poetic 


FIRST    PART    OF    UEKRY    FV.  399 

censor  of  the  transmitted  order  to  its  dramatic 
upholder. 

Here  we  are  likewise  to  mark  that  in  Elizabeth 's 
reign  during  these  very  years,  rebellion  was  brew- 
ing in  the  hearts  of  several  noblemen  of  the  Queen 's 
court — Essex,  Southampton,  and  others,  with  whom 
Shakespeare  stood  in  ties  of  some  intimacy.  This 
whole  play  may  be  taken  as  a  warning  of  the  dan- 
gers of  insurrection  blazoned  by  the  poet  to  his  hot- 
headed blue-blooded  friends.  In  fact  Hotspur  is 
pictured  largely  though  not  wholly  from  Southamp- 
ton, who  was  also  the  soldier,  the  high-spirited 
cavalier  now  in  revolt  against  the  Queen's  author- 
ity, for  which  he  will  later  be  condemned  to  death 
though  not  executed,  as  was  Essex.  The  vivid  im- 
pression produced  by  Hotspur  springs  from  the 
poet's  immediate  vision  and  experience;  he  knew 
the  actual  man,  and  may  have  served  under  him  a 
while  as  a  soldier.  To  be  sure,  Southampton  pa- 
tronized poetry  while  Hotspur  pretends  to  hate  it, 
though  poetical  in  his  very  hate. 

Thus  an  atmosphere  of  insurrection  hovers  over 
this  drama  from  beginning  to  end,  and  doubtless 
reflects  the  feeling  of  the  poet 's  environment  at  the 
time.  But  the  untoward  revolt  is  suppressed  vig- 
orously and  bloodily  both  in  the  play  and  in  the 
fact.  King  Henry's  ideal  triumph  on  the  stage 
foreshows  the  real  one  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  for 
Shakespeare's  far-gleaming  signal  of  warning  was 
not  heeded  by  those  before  whose  eyes  it  was 
flashed.     And  the  poet  himself  after  this  Happy 


400  SHAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

Sexennium  will  be  plunged  into  an  ever-deepening 
gloom  over  the  tragic  fate  of  his  high-placed  friends 
and  noble  patrons.  But  that  chapter  of  his  life  is 
to  come  in  its  order. 

(2)  Such  is  what  we  may  call  the  Established 
World  asserting  itself  victorious  over  the  inner  re- 
volt and  disruption  of  its  upper  class.  But  in  the 
drama  rises  a  social  appearance  quite  of  the  other 
and  lower  layer,  namely  the  Perverted  World 
which  centers  in  the  tavern  of  Eastcheap,  and 
whose  right  king  is  Sir  John  Falstaff.  It  is  de- 
voted to  all  sorts  of  sensuous  indulgence,  which 
perverts  both  the  individual  and  society  from  the 
rational  purpose  of  human  existence.  It  is  essen- 
tially comic,  self-annulling,  absurd,  and  hence  in 
the  last  outcome,  tragic,  as  we  shall  note  in  the 
fate  of  Falstaff.  And  we  may  well  prefigure  that 
this  Happy  Sexennium  is  destined,  in  the  poet's 
dramatic  evolution,  to  turn  into  Tragedy,  when  it 
has  spent  itself  creating  and  performing  its  eleven 
Comedies  inclusive  of  its  Histories.  But  wait  a 
while!  upon  our  poet  that  stroke  of  the  time  has 
not  yet  fallen. 

The  connecting  link  between  these  two  Worlds, 
the  perverted  and  the  ordered,  or  between  Falstaff 's 
Eastcheap  and  the  King's  Palace  is  Prince  Henry, 
son  and  heir  of  the  Monarch.  Thus  the  royal  youth 
takes  over  into  himself  and  conjoins  in  his  own  ex- 
perience the  extremes  of  the  social  system,  the  up- 
permost and  the  lowest,  the  positive  and  the  nega- 


FIRST    FART    OF    HENRY    IV.  401 

tive  phases  of  man's  associated  life.  Consequently 
Prince  Henry  is  the  one  character  spanning  the 
total  arch  of  the  play's  action;  he  belongs  to  both 
its  leading  threads,  the  serious  and  the  comic,  the 
actual  historic  and  the  fictional  humorous,  the  court 
and  the  tavern. 

Now  it  is  this  fact  which  specially  makes  him  in 
the  present  drama  the  true  image  and  the  repre- 
sentative of  Shakespeare  himself,  who  has  recently 
passed  through  essentially  the  same  experience  in 
life.  For  our  poet  also  had  taken  his  purgatorial 
journey  through  a  literary  Eastcheap  with  his 
rabblement  of  reveling  poets,  as  already  set  forth ; 
and,  he,  having  risen  out  of  it,  is  now  looking  back- 
ward, proposing  to  tell  about  it  after  his  dramatic 
way.  The  chief  vehicle  of  his  experience  and  finally 
of  his  soul's  transformation  is  just  this  Prince 
Henry,  though  the  outward  circumstances  of  the 
men  be  directly  opposite.  But  just  through  this 
contrast  is  the  spiritual  unity  of  the  two  peni- 
tents emphasized  the  more  intimately.  The  poet 
is  here  telling  his  change  of  heart  and  his  confes- 
sion by  means  of  literature,  which  thus  becomes  his 
ultimate  absolution  and  reconciliation,  inner  and 
outer.  Prince  Henry's  palingenesis,  which  runs 
through  and  interconnects  the  whole  Trilogy,  is  in 
essence  Shakespeare's. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  poet  has  in  several  pass- 
ages made  his  identity  with  the  Prince  quite  too 
overwhelming  for  the  good  of  his  drama.  Espe- 
cially in  the  well-known  soliloquy  (Act  I.  Scene  2.) 


402  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

when  the  Prince  says  that  ''this  loose  behavior"  of 
his  present  life  is  merely  put  on  for  a  while  with 
design,  and  that  he  will  throw  it  off  at  the  right 
moment,  and  ' '  pay  the  debt  I  never  promised ' ',  we 
hear  the  old  experienced  Shakespeare  looking  back 
consciously  to  the  past,  and  not  the  young  inexperi- 
enced Prince  driving  forth  unconsciously  to  the  fu- 
ture. Hence  the  character  has  been  pronounced 
at  this  point  discordant,  unnatural,  even  priggish. 
But  our  interest  is  to  watch  even  the  expert  dra- 
matist Shakespeare  fall  out  of  his  role  in  his  zeal 
for  self-expression,  since  he  is  the  one  who  has  gone 
through  the  mill  already,  and,  knowing  all  about  it, 
can  proclaim  his  good  new  resolutions  in  view  of 
foregone  bitter  trials.  But  that  is  not  the  case  with 
boyish  Prince  Hal,  who  has  just  started  to  quaff 
his  first  draughts  of  Palstaff's  intoxicating  word- 
wine,  and  to  revel  in  the  magic  of  that  all-dissolv- 
ing comic  personality. 

Still  the  whole  career  of  Henry  IV,  from  the 
riotous  defiant  Princeling  to  the  heroic  political 
and  religious  Monarch,  is  unfolded  with  such  sym- 
pathy of  soul  and  speech  that  we  catch  the  very 
thought  and  tone  of  the  poet  here  shriving  him- 
self after  his  new-won  outlook  on  life.  The  entire 
Trilogy,  through  which  the  evolution  of  Henry  V 
streams  from  youth  to  ripest  manhood's  fulfilment 
in  the  deed,  becomes  a  kind  of  panoramic  pageant 
of  Shakespeare's  own  stages  of  development,  from 
his  early  London  days  up  to  the  time  of  this  poem's 
composition — to  be  sure,  with  a  shocking  difference 


FIEST    PAST    OF    EENEY    IV.  403 

of  social  conditions,  not  unlike  that  between  King 
Cophetua  and  his  beggar  maid. 

(3)  Turning  from  these  deeper  currents  of  the 
poet^'s  revelation  of  his  own  spirit 's  progress  in  this 
drama,  we  may  next  glance  at  some  of  its  more  ex- 
ternal events  which  hint  of  his  youthful  days  at 
Stratford  and  their  experiences.  For  instance,  the 
Welsh  borderland  with  its  people  and  their  con- 
flicts often  lies  in  the  background  of  the  present 
play,  whereof  we  have  already  given  a  telling 
sample  in  the  furious  duel  between  English  Morti- 
mer and  Welsh  Glendower  ''on  gentle  Severn's 
sedgy  bank",  which  was  not  far  from  Shakespeare's 
birth-town.  Indeed  the  extraordinary  vividness  of 
these  scenes,  as  well  as  certain  added  strokes,  show 
that  the  poet  took  them  direct  from  tradition  and 
from  actual  life  on  the  border  more  than  from  the 
dry  old  annalist  Holinshed,  who  tallies  down  his 
desiccated  events  and  persons  one  after  the  other 
in  due  mummied  succession.  And  our  good  reader 
has  not  forgotten  (we  dare  hope)  that  on  a  former 
page  we  have  indicated  how  the  high  cavalier  Hot- 
spur seems  to  have  had  some  Yery  humble  experi- 
ences of  cottage-life,  quite  similar  to  those  of  the 
young  husband  Shakespeare  in  Anne  Hathaway 's 
rural  cabin  redolent  of  cheese  and  garlic. 

Many  other  little  touches  of  the  poet 's  Stratford 
time  we  may  trace  in  this  drama,  if  we  take  the 
trouble  to  look  beneath  his  dramatic  disguise  into 
his  own  heart,  which  bubbles  out  of  these  youthful 
experiences  with  intoxicating  freshness.     It  seems 


404  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DRAMA 

to  me  that  I  hear  the  laddie  poet  Willie  Shake- 
speare spouting  or  rather  singing  those  love-ecsta- 
cies  under  the  mask  of  Mortimer,  when  the  latter 
addresses  his  Welsh  lady-love: 

I  understand  thy  looks:  that  pretty  Welsh 
Which  thou  pour'st  down  from  these  swelling 

heavens 
I  am  too  perfect  in     ...     . 
I  understand  thy  kisses  and  thou  mine — 

which  language  (of  osculation)  was  the  only  one 
they  could  converse  in  with  reciprocal  intelligence 
and  satisfaction,  each  being  ignorant  of  the  other's 
articulate  speech.  But  listen  to  that  lover-oath  of 
raptured  Mortimer-Shakespeare  with  its  tingling 
cadence : 

But  I  will  never  be  a  truant,  love, 
Till  I  have  learned  thy  language ;  for  thy  tongue 
Makes  Welsh  as  sweet  as  ditties  highly  penned, 
Sung  by  a  fair  queen  in  a  summer's  bower, 
With  ravishing  division,  to  her  lute. 

Such  is  the  scene:  the  young  Stratford  poet  hold- 
ing a  kind  of  eisteddfod  or  tournament  of  song 
with  his  Welsh  sweetheart  in  the  two  mutually 
unintelligible  languages  somewhere  out  on  the  bor- 
derland of  England  and  Wales. 

Did  Shakespeare  himself  feel  somewhat  of  that 
strange  supernatural  terror  which  seemed  to  be 
homed  in  the  mountains  of  Wales,  and  which  ap- 
peared incarnate  in  the  wonder-working  Glendower 


SECOKD    PAST    OF    HEN  BY    TV,  405 

whose  supposed  unearthly  prowess  made  the  Eng- 
lish shiver  with  dread?  King  Henry  lets  peep  his 
own  secret  awe,  titling  the  Welsh  chieftain  ''that 
great  magician,  damned  Glendower",  and  proclaims 
that  English  Mortimer 

di^rst  as  well  have  met  the  devil  alone 
As  Owen  Glendower  for  an  enemy. 

And  Falstaff  likewise  calls  the  uncanny  Welsh  foe 
''that  devil  Glendower",  and,  evidently  trembling 
in  lips,  whispers  to  the  Prince:  ''Art  thou  not 
horribly  afraid  ?  doth  not  thy  blood  thrill  ? ' '  Even 
Hotspur  who  makes  so  much  fun  of  Glendower 's 
supernatural  pretensions  to  his  face,  shows  a  good 
deal  of  respect  for  him  behind  his  back.  Thus 
quite  a  little  strain  of  Welsh  and  English  super- 
stition, or  perchance  folk-spirit  is  woven  through 
this  drama,  all  of  which  the  boy  must  have  imbibed 
at  first  hand  from  his  Stratford  entourage. 

Still  a  striking  omission  should  again  be  re- 
marked in  this  connection.  A  wonderful  poetic 
world  over  in  Wales  across  the  border  had  many 
centuries  before  been  built  at  Caerleon  on  the  Usk, 
which  was  famed  throughout  Europe  as  the  seat  of 
King  Arthur 's  Court  along  with  his  Knights  of  the 
Round  Table.  Shakespeare  must  have  heard  that 
legend  dozens  of  times  in  his  youth,  for  it  was  cur- 
rent everywhere  around  him ;  then  in  London  dur- 
ing his  manhood  he  could  hardly  have  escaped 
some  acquaintance  with  Sir  Thomas  Malory's 
Morte  D' Arthur,  a  much-read  romance  of  the  Ar- 


406  SHAKESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DUAMA. 

thurian  circle,  and  then  already  a  quarry  for  poets, 
as  recently  for  Tennyson  and  others.  But  Shake- 
speare seems  to  shun  the  great  Welsh  Mythus 
throughout  his  entire  works,  making  to  it  only  a 
very  few  brief  allusions,  and  those  rather  comtempt- 
uous.  And  yet  the  Arthurian  legend  has  shown  its 
perdurable  vitality,  for  it  is  still  creative  to-day  in 
the  poetry  of  Europe  and  even  of  America. 

The  Second  Part  of  Henry  IV.  This  middle 
play  of  the  Trilogy  takes  a  big  drop  both  in  ex- 
ternal interest  as  well  as  inner  worth,  when  com- 
pared with  the  preceding  First  Part.  Still  the 
general  theme  is  carried  forward  to  its  conclusion : 
the  political  revolt  headed  by  the  Percys  is  com- 
pletely suppressed  through  established  authority, 
while  the  moral  revolt  incorporate  in  Falstaff  and 
the  wassailers  of  Boar's  Head  loses  much  of  its 
power  through  the  Prince's  conversion  and  recon- 
ciliation with  the  King,  his  father,  after  his  final 
frolic  at  Eastcheap.  Such  is,  in  general,  the  sweep 
of  the  whole  drama,  wherein  we  may  catch  the  pres- 
ent conservative  attitude  of  the  poet  toward  the 
existent  order. 

By  way  of  contrast  we  shall  cite  what  may  be 
deemed  the  play's  strongest  passage,  which  ex- 
presses in  mighty  words  the  universally  destructive 
spirit  of  rebellion,  as  voiced  by  the  old  revolter 
Northumberland,  whose  son  Hotspur  has  already 
perished  in  treason's  assault  upon  the  constituted 
government : 


SECOND    PABT    OF    HE  NET    IV,  407 

Now  let  not  Nature's  hand 
Keep  the  wild  flood  confined !    let  order  die, 
And  let  this  world  no  longer  be  a  stage 
To  feed  contention  in  a  lingering  act! 
But  let  one  spirit  of  the  first  born  Cain 
Reign  in  all  bosoms,  that,  each  heart  being  set 
On  bloody  courses,  the  rude  scene  may  end 
And  darkness  be  the  burier  of  the  dead ! 

Thus  the  aged  anarch  frantically  invokes  the 
grand  cataclysm  to  overtake  the  world  and  its  or- 
der, and  prays  that  the  spirit  of  Cain,  the  first 
brother-murderer,  may  ''reign  in  all  bosoms". 
These  lines,  in  their  sound,  style,  and  meaning,  re- 
call the  defiant  trumpet  blast  of  Marlowe,  who  also 
sank  down  to  death  in  revolt  against  the  world's 
order.  And  Shakespeare  himself  once  shared  in 
this  challenge  of  the  established  State  with  its 
kingship.  But  here  he  sees  to  it  that  the  present 
monarch,  though  once  a  throne-getter  through 
Percy's  rebellion,  now  turns  about  and  puts  down 
Percy's  rebellion,  reversing  himself  indeed,  but 
vindicating  his  new-won  authority.  Thus  the 
wrong  of  revolution  is  undone  through  the  deed,  by 
the  former  revolutionary  himself,  who  puts  a  stop 
to  further  revolutionizing  after  the  success  of  his 
own.  Still,  as  if  in  response  to  this  outer  fortune, 
he  has  a  fearful  inner  backstroke  of  conscience. 

But  when  we  have  properly  adjusted  everything 
and  everybody,  the  great  outstanding  character  of 
this  play,  indeed  the  central  culminating  problem 


408  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFB-DBAMA 

of  the  whole  Trilogy  is  Falstaff.  For  he  brings  up 
a  peculiar  contradiction:  he  is  the  poet's  supreme 
comic  creation,  and  yet  he  turns  out  tragic,  as  if  the 
very  goal  and  outcome  of  Comedy  were  Tragedy. 
Falstaff  is  endowed  with  high  mental  gifts,  yet  he 
uses  them  as  means  or  even  as  slaves  for  his  lower 
nature.  Spirit  in  him  is  turned  upside  down,  be- 
ing made  servant  to  what  it  ought  to  master.  Dante 
would  have  figured  him  as  a  monster,  half -human, 
half-bestial,  and  have  whelmed  him  down  into  the 
infernal  circle  of  gluttons  or  liars.  Moreover  Fal- 
staff has  built  a  world  out  of  himself  like  himself, 
with  its  inmates  negative  to  all  moral  subordination. 
Eastcheap  is  a  kind  of  Dante's  Inferno  with  its 
living  active  Satan. 

And  yet  Falstaff  is  a  pathetic  character  from  the 
start,  and  he  continually  begs  for  human  sympathy. 
He  is  full  of  penitential  spasms,  on  account  of 
which  trait  he  has  been  dubbed  by  his  hardened 
companions  as  Monsieur  Remorse.  At  times  his 
voice  trembles,  and  he  seems  ready  to  weep  over 
himself  for  his  sad  infirmities.  He  as  it  were 
glimpses  his  own  fate,  and  sheds  a  tear  at  his  own 
tragedy,  which  he  forefeels  approaching.  To  be 
sure,  his  changes  are  very  rapid:  in  a  moment  he 
turns  ''from  praying  to  purse-taking",  from  com- 
punction to  Sir  John  Sack-and-Sugar,  from  Saint 
to  Satan. 

In  Shakespeare's  Comedies  proper,  as  already 
considered,  the  comic  fact  lies  outside  the  person- 
ality or  the  self  of  the  dramatic  character;  it  is 


SECOND    PABT    OF    HENEY    IV.  409 

some  outer  mistake  of  the  senses  (as  in  the  Errors) ^ 
or  some  inner  mistake  of  the  mind,  as  foible,  folly, 
frailty  (for  instance  that  of  conceited  Malvolio, 
shrewish  Catherine,  love-scouting  Benedict).  This 
is  what  the  general  course  of  the  comic  action  has 
to  eliminate,  and  so  to  leave  the  former  victim  free 
of  his  failing  or  of  his  absurdity.  But  in  the  case 
of  Palstaff,  the  personality  itself  gets  involved  and 
becomes  comic,  ridiculous,  self-undoing;  the  very 
soul  tends  to  be  one  universal  human  frailty,  which 
makes  absurd  and  irrational  its  own  existence. 
Honor,  conscience,  repentance,  the  most  earnest  ef- 
forts of  man's  spirit  for  self-recovery  after  the 
lapse  through  folly  and  sin,  turn  to  a  laugh,  to  an 
effervescent  bubble  of  humor  in  Falstaff's  religion. 
Yet  he  is  no  hypocrite,  no  skeptic,  no  blasphemer, 
but  a  believer  with  strong  self-condemnation  for  his 
perverted  life,  and  with  intermittent  lofty  resolu- 
tions for  amendment:  "I'll  purge  and  leave  sack 
and  live  cleanly,  as  a  nobleman  should  do." 

At  this  deepest  point  of  character,  he  stands  in 
pronounced  contrast  to  his  young  eom-i)anion  Prince 
Henry,  who  sincerely  repents,  confesses  his  derelic- 
tions, and  begins  a  new  life,  turning  away  from 
Falstaff's  Satanic  fascination.  For  the  old  sinner 
was  undoubtedly  a  charmer,  and  slill  is  to-day. 
Also  the  King  is  deeply  troubled  in  conscience  for 
his  past  actions,  especially  for  his  deed  done  to 
Richard  II;  he  openly  confesses  his  guilt  and  will 
seek  absolution  through  a  crusade  to  the  Holy 
Sepulchre.    Verily  that  royal  household  has  become 


410  SHAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA, 

the  home  of  prayer,  penitence,  atonement;  both 
father  and  son  are  showing  the  broken  and  contrite 
heart  with  promise  of  repentance  and  regeneration. 

Now  the  enigmatic  fact  confronts  us  tliat  Falstaff 
is  going  through  quite  the  same  penitent  process, 
and  yet  overmaking  it  all  to  comedy,  doing  so  not 
in  mockery  but  by  the  very  necessity  of  his  nature. 
Why  this  supreme  comic  development  just  here 
and  now?  Falstaff  is  a  product  of  the  time;  the 
whole  sensuous  element  of  man  breaks,  loose  in  him 
and  goes  on  a  universal  spree ;  all  things  fixed,  es- 
tablished, hallowed  melt  to  pieces  in  his  soul's  dis- 
solution, which  condition  springs  not  from  hate  or 
even  ridicule,  but  from  a  kind  of  love,  whose  very 
law  is  to  break  the  law  while  acknowledging  it  as 
his  dearest  conviction. 

Thus  Falstaff  is  limned  as  the  antitype  of  the 
King  in  the  deepest  throes  of  his  spirit — in  contri- 
tion, confession,  repentance.  Medieval  legend 
called  the  devil  God's  ape;  Falstaff  too  imitates, 
almost  parodies,  the  divine  process  of  redemption, 
not  as  scoffer  or  denier  (like  Goethe's  Mephisto- 
pheles)  but  as  believer.  The  outer  form  he  knows 
and  repeats;  the  inner  life,  the  soul's  reality  is  not 
his,  and  hence  in  his  present  state  he  cannot  repent 
— he  is  fated. 

So  it  comes  that  his  body,  his  external  shape  cor- 
responds to  his  character.  He  is  in  contour  a  huge 
bubble,  which  is  nature's  laugh  rising  into  the  air 
and  exploding  fitfully,  sometimes  with  a  detonation, 
into  nothingness.     Such  is  the  supreme  comic  out- 


SECOND    PABT    OF    HENEY    IV.  411 

come.  Visibly  he  is  all  abdomen,  with  bottomless 
appetite  for  sack  and  capon,  which  however,  is 
capped  with  a  brain  ever-spraying  fresh  humor 
whose  empty  though  iridescent  globules  flash  out 
and  then  burst  into  the  universal  void.  Nature 
herself  in  his  overflowing  organism  turns  to  a  seen 
comedy,  which  already  in  advance  laughs  at  what 
he  is  going  to  say,  giving  the  cue  to  the  listener. 
Thus  body  and  mind  play  the  same  part  together 
for  eye-sight  and  insight. 

In  such  fashion  we  seek  to  conceive  the  place  of 
the  Fat  Knight  in  the  author's  long  and  deep  ex- 
perience of  life.  Shakespeare  unfolded  into  Fal- 
staff  and  Falstaffianism,  and  then  out  of  him  and 
his  Pandemonium  of  East  cheap.  For  the  poet  not 
only  saw  that  bright  human  bubble  of  evanescence 
in  outward  inflated  shape  (some  have  thought  they 
could  point  to  the  very  man),  but  he  felt  the  Fal- 
staffian  consciousness  in  his  own  self,  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  his  own  comic  genius.  So  he  deepens  Com- 
edy to  its  ultimate  profoundest  turning-point 
where  it  reaches  its  own  self-annulment,  in  which 
we  behold  the  outcome  and  the  conclusion  of  the 
poet's  Happy  Sexennium.  Comedy  is  pushed  to 
the  point  of  being  comic  to  itself  in  Falstaff — 
ridiculous,  absurd,  self -negative,  a  bursted  bubble. 

Henry  V.  This  third  and  last  play  of  the  Tril- 
ogy is  its  culmination,  assuredly  not  in  poetic  ex- 
cellence but  in  that  re-actionary  conservative 
tendency  which  we  have  already  noticed  as  the 
tone-giving    characteristic   of   the   poet's    present 


412  SHAEESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

Epoch.  Prince  Hal,  now  crowned  King  Henry  V, 
is  transformed  into  the  most  devoted  supporter  of 
those  two  supreme  institutions,  Church  and  State, 
both  of  which  he  as  a  youth  not  simply  disregarded 
but  openly  set  at  defiance.  And  it  seems  that  he 
has  not  alone  accepted  them  tamely  as  something 
transmitted  in  the  line  of  his  office,  but  he  has 
studied  them  profoundly,  having  become  quite 
suddenly  learned  both  in  theology  and  politics,  the 
sciences  of  Church  and  State.  For  listen  to  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  a  good  judge  of  such 
doctrinal  qualities: 

Hear  him  but  reason  in  divinity 

And  all-admiring,  with  an  inward  wish 

You  would  desire  the  king  were  made  a  prelate ; 

Hear  him  debate  of  commonwealth  affairs. 

You  would  say  it  hath  been  all  his  study. 

And  to  like  extent '  skilled  practically  does  he  ap- 
pear in  war  and  administration : 

So  that  the  art  and  practic  part  of  life 
Must  be  the  mistress  of  this  theoric. 

How  and  when  did  the  young  Prince  ever  get  so 
much  knowledge,  is  now  the  sudden  problem.  For 
nobody  ever  ''noted  in  him  any  study",  since  his 
hours  were  ' '  filled  up  with  riots,  banquets,  sports ' ', 
his  boon  associates  being  ''unlettered,  rude,  and 
shallow",  such  as  those  delectable  denizens  of  East- 
cheap.  Well  may  the  good  Archbishop  wonder  at 
this  unexpected  lore  of  a  youth  who  seemed  to  turn 


HENBY    V.  413 

away  from  all  labors  of  the  student ;  and  the  enigma 
remains  even  after  the  Bishop  of  Ely  has  added  his 
illustrative  text:  ''The  strawberry  grows  under- 
neath the  nettle" — so  the  young  Prince  grew  ''un- 
der the  veil  of  wildness".  But  the  interest  for  us 
now  is  that  Shakespeare  himself  underwent  some 
such  change,  seemingly  not  so  rapid,  while  the 
problem  of  his  erudition  still  haunts  not  a  few  of 
his  readers  who  dazedly  inquire:  Through  what 
strange  channel  could  have  come  all  that  learning 
of  his?  One  well-known  answer  is:  he  was  not 
himself  but  Bacon. 

Another  singular  characteristic  of  this  drama  is 
the  stress  which  it  puts  upon  genealogy,  inherited 
titles,  legitimacy.  Indeed  the  whole  war  with 
France  pivots  on  a  pedigree — a  fatal  pedigree,  as 
it  turns  out,  even  with  the  victory  of  Agincourt. 
In  all  Shakespeare  there  is  nothing  so  utterly  un- 
poetical,  so  mentally  desolate  as  that  long  genea- 
logical list  which  is  supposed  to  justify  Henry's 
title  to  the  French  crown.  One  begins  to  think  of 
Walt  Whitman's  broad  spaces  of  sandy  rigmarole. 
Such  dry  heraldry  may  have  charm  for  the  rank- 
loving  English,  but  it  simply  mummifies  the  Ameri- 
can reader.  Still  we  may  start  up  some  interest  in 
this  desiccated  part  of  Shakespeare  if  we  find  that 
it  has  a  place,  though  small,  in  his  life's  whole 
journey.  Accordingly  we  learn  that  just  during 
the  years  of  his  composing  this  Trilogy  (1596-9) 
he  was  engaged  in  a  prolonged  attempt  to  obtain  a 
coat-of-arms,  and  thus  to  become  a  titular  English 


414  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

Gentleman.  In  fact  the  year  when  he  at  last  re- 
ceived his  title  after  quite  a  little  battle,  was  1599, 
which  is  usually  given  as  the  date  of  his  writing 
the  present  drama.  So  we  may  think  that  gene- 
alogy was  a  special  experience,  or  perchance  hobby 
of  his  at  this  time,  and  became  interwoven  in  his 
Life-drama,  whereof  the  lasting  mark  was  stamped 
on  Henry  V.  And  it  should  be  added  that  the  pur- 
chase of  New  Place,  his  gentlemanly  residence  at 
Stratford  belongs  to  this  same  genealogical  time 
(1597).  Underneath  all  these  superficialities  we 
may  discern  Shakespeare's  present  trend  toward 
the  transmitted,  the  conventional,  the  titled  in  his 
environing  social  system. 

And  now  in  this  drama  we  are  again  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  character  whose  true  place 
is  in  the  heart  of  the  whole  Trilogy — Falstaff — 
who  seems  to  many  readers  not  to  get  his  right 
treatment  here  at  the  close.  Ought  not  the  peni- 
tent Knight  to  be  saved  as  well  as  the  penitent 
Prince?  There  is  no  doubt  that  his  would  have 
been  a  far  greater  work  if  the  poet  had  known  how 
to  redeem  Falstaff  along  with  Hal,  despite  their 
difference  of  age  and  rank.  And  it  is  equally  cer- 
tain that  the  Prince  would  have  shown  a  far  loftier 
character  if  he  had  taken  his  old  devoted  com- 
panion in  sin  with  himself  over  into  his  new  ethical 
life.  There  is  something  harsh  if  not  inhuman  in 
the  way  in  which  the  converted  Prince  banishes 
from  his  presence  his  once  nearest  friend  and  fel- 
low-worker in  evil  ways. 


HENBY    r.  415 

But  is  Falstaff  redeemable?  I  think  it  is  indi- 
cated where  his  chief  psychical  defect  lies:  in  his 
Will.  He  often  shows  the  contrite  heart  (contritio 
cordis)  and  often  confesses  plaintively  his  failings 
(confessio  oris),  but  he  could  not  fulfil  that  last 
stage  of  the  penitential  process  in  the  corresponding 
deed  ( satis f actio  operis).  The  least  temptation  or 
suggestion  was  to  him  an  irresistible  lure,  and 
would  spin  him  off  into  lying,  thieving,  sack-guz- 
zling, after  which  would  start  another  paroxysm 
of  repentance.  Still  it  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that 
he  amid  all  his  excesses  feels  the  backstroke  of  con- 
science, and  then  drops  into  one  of  his  penitential 
effervescences,  which,  however,  have  no  power  of 
cleansing  his  life.  So  he  is  left  to  his  fate  by  his 
comrade,  the  Prince,  and  also  by  his  poet,  Shake- 
speare, both  of  whom  appear  to  deem  him  the  doer 
of  the  irremissible  sin. 

Such  we  must  hold  to  be  the  poet's  present  view 
of  his  erring  fellow-man,  which  indicates  the  stage 
he  has  so  far  reached  in  his  spirit's  development — 
somewhat  limited,  not  yet  fully  freed  of  the  pre- 
scribed fetters  of  his  age.  It  is  true  that  Shake- 
speare cannot  now  redeem  his  transcendent  repro- 
bate, who  therefore  has  to  stay  unregenerate  and 
damned.  But  the  time  will  come  when  the  poet  is 
to  win  the  power  of  rescuing  Falstaff,  as  he  does  a 
worse  man,  Leontes,  and  when  finally  he  will  save 
through  repentance  even  Caliban,  a  Dantesque  mon- 
ster, half-human,  half-bestial — seemingly  the  last 
dramatic  deed  of  his  life,  set  forth  on  the  last  page 


416  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

of  his  last  play.  But  that  fulfilment  lies  far  ahead 
of  his  present  state  of  evolution,  in  a  wholly  new 
Period  of  his  creative  energy,  which  we  have  called 
his  redemptive  time.  But  this  completed  realisa- 
tion of  the  poet  comes  long  after  the  present  drama, 
and  can  only  take  place  when  he  has  passed  through 
the  experience  of  his  tragic  Period,  which  is  like- 
wise yet  to  be. 

We  still  go  back  and  ask:  In  what  lay  Fal- 
staff's  charm  for  the  young  Prince?  Somewhat 
parallel  runs  the  question :  In  what  lay  Marlowe 's 
charm  for  the  young  Shakespeare?  Genius  is  com- 
mon to  both  and  a  transcendent  power  of  self- 
expression;  but  their  deepest  fascination  lies  else- 
where. Both  Falstaff  and  Marlowe  were  members 
and  indeed  makers  of  that  negative,  perverted 
world,  which  is  the  night-side  or  the  unsunned  half 
of  humanity;  and  that  is  just  what  Prince  Henry 
and  Shakespeare  must  know  and  experience  in  or- 
der to  be  and  to  realize  the  whole  man  in  their  own 
manhood.  Call  it  the  old  Serpent's  temptation, 
Adam's  fall,  or  the  soul's  first  love  for  Lilith,  the 
enchantress  or  the  Dark  Lady;  the  poet  and  his 
prince  are  going  to  test  in  its  full  actuality  the 
grand  cosmical  dualism  of  good  and  evil,  master  it, 
or  perish. 

In  fact,  Marlowe  seems  alluded  to  in  an  early 
passage  of  this  Trilogy,  which  recalls  the  pivotal 
fact  of  his  most  characteristic  play,  his  Faustus: 
*'Jack,  how  agrees  the  devil  and  thee  about  thy 
soul  that  thou  soldest  to  him  on  Good  Friday  last 


EENBY    V.  417 

for  a  cup  of  Madeira  and  a  cold  capon's  leg?" 
(First  Henry  IV.  Act  1.  Sc.  2).  So  Falstaff  too 
has  bartered  his  soul  to  the  Devil  for  appetite's 
sake  in  imitation  of  Faust's  agreement  with  Me- 
phistopheles — probably  a  wild  scene  from  Mar- 
lowe 's  drama  mimicked  by  FalstafP  in  the  pothouse 
at  Eastcheap  blasphemously  ''on  Good  Friday 
last".  And  the  Prince  forecasts  the  outcome: 
''Sir  John  stands  to  his  word,  the  Devil  shall  have 
his  bargain",  and  take  his  own.  No  salvation  for 
him  according  to  the  Prince  and  Marlowe,  and  also 
according  to  the  present  Shakespeare,  who  will 
voice  Falstaff 's  final  condemnation  through  the 
same  Prince  Henry  when  the  latter  gets  to  be  king. 
Thus  it  would  seem  that  Shakespeare 's  Falstaff  has 
one  or  more  lines  of  derivation  from  Marlowe's 
Faustus,  which  character  itself  springs  of  the  su- 
preme Teutonic  Mythus  of  the  bargain  with  the 
Devil. 

Still  the  Prince  with  all  his  keen  twitting  had 
strong  affection  for  Falstaff,  whom  he  really  de- 
manded for  his  completed  discipline.  When  he 
sighs :  * '  I  could  have  better  spared  a  better  man ' ', 
he  confesses  not  only  his  love  but  also  his  need  of 
the  Fat  Knight  whose  society,  or  rather  whose 
schooling,  he  was  not  yet  quite  ready  to  do  without. 
(End  of  First  Henry  IV).  What  was  the  want,  or 
perchance  the  gap  which  Falstaff  filled  in  his  life? 
Not  merely  amusement  but  training  he  received; 
Falstaff 's  school  was  for  him  that  of  the  World 
Perverted,  and  also  that  of  the  Will  Perverted; 


418  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

he  was  getting  through  Falstaff's  unique  pedagogy 
to  be  aware  of  himself,  of  his  fellow-man,  and  of 
his  future  vocation,  as  ruler.  Sense  of  loss  one 
may  hear  in  his  deep  suspiration  over  his  teacher's 
supposed  death : 

What,  old  acquaintance !   could  not  all  this  flesh 
Keep  in  a  little  life !    Poor  Jack,  farewell ! 
Oh  I  should  have  a  heavy  miss  of  thee 
If  I  were  much  in  love  with  vanity ! 

So  he  looks  back  with  pensive  fondness,  yet  hints 
his  spirit's  change  already  setting  in  away  from 
his  ''vanity".  The  words  breathe  forth  so  heart- 
felt and  expressive  that  we  may  catch  in  them  the 
voice  of  the  poet  himself  giving  a  brief  retrospect 
of  his  experience,  as  he  flashes  his  look  backward 
upon  this  present  Epoch  now  about  to  close. 

Falstaff  is  tragic,  but  not  bloodily  so;  he  is  not 
slain  by  violence  upon  the  stage,  as  was  the  case  in 
the  poet's  early  tempestuous  dramas  (Titus,  Rich- 
ard III).  Exactly  what  to  do  with  the  Fat  Knight 
at  his  career's  close  seems  to  have  given  some 
trouble  to  the  poet,  who  could  not  kill  him  off  as  a 
villain  or  save  him  as  a  penitent.  Broken  by  the 
King's  harsh  reproof  and  dismissal,  Falstaff  goes 
back  to  his  early  fellow-bibbers  in  Eastcheap  where 
he  will  die  without  saying  a  word  of  blame.  From 
these  sympathetic  friends  we  get  some  throbbing 
echoes  of  what  has  happened  to  him:  ''the  King 
has  killed  his  heart",  says  the  Hostess  once  known 
under  the  name  of  Dame  Quickly.    And  Pistol  evi- 


HENBT    V.  419 

dently  will  convey  the  same  meaning  in  his  pom- 
pous Latinized  jargon:  ''His  heart  is  fracted  and 
corroborate".  Thus  Falstaff  is  made  to  die  of  a 
broken  heart,  seemingly  the  only  instance  in  Shake- 
speare, with  the  possible  exception  of  Kent  in  King 
Lear.  The  question  pushes  up  even  in  Eastcheap : 
Where  is  he  now  ?  The  funeral  sermon  is  preached 
over  him  by  the  lowly  woman  there,  who  says  of 
Falstaff :  ' '  Nay,  sure  he  is  not  in  hell ;  he 's  in 
Arthurs 's  (Abraham's)  bosom,  if  ever  man  went  to 
Arthur's  bosom.  He  made  a  finer  end  and  went 
away,  an  it  had  been  any  christom  child".  So 
speaks  in  her  pathetic  patois  the  forgiving  Hostess, 
for  she  has  had  much  to  complain  of  in  her  various 
dealings  with  her  long-trusted  customer,  who  was 
so  gifted  with  wit  and  abdomen  and  impecuniosity. 
Lines  of  heroism  she  shows  which  the  heroic  King 
himself  has  not,  and  she  seems  dimly  prophetic  of 
the  coming  final  Shakespeare,  when  he  will  be  able 
to  redeem  even  a  Falstaff,  who  undoubtedly  re- 
quires a  longer,  profounder,  more  searching  disci- 
pline than  the  poet  can  now  give  him,  without  some 
newer  and  deeper-reaching  experience  of  his  own. 

In  about  ten  years  from  the  conclusion  of  this 
play,  as  we  score  the  time,  the  poet  will  unfold  into 
his  final  remedial  Period,  when  he  will  show  a  per- 
vading bias,  or  rather  a  settled  passion  for  redeem- 
ing his  own  damned  of  his  former  dramas.  Thus 
he  will  rise  beyond  his  retributive  self  into  the 
soul's  mediatorial  realm,  of  which  we  may  feel  the 
mood  and  catch  the  word  in  Winter's  Tale.     Then 


420  SHAKESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

he  will  have  transcended  his  present  heroic  model, 
and  outstripped  his  once  idealized  alter  ego,  Henry 
V,  into  a  new  stage  of  his  Life-drama,  having  at- 
tained the  love  and  the  fulfilment  to  be  a  savior 
instead  of  a  destroyer. 

But  before  this  concluding  redemptive  time, 
which  will  be  his  Third  Period,  and  in  towering 
contrast  with  the  same,  Shakespeare  is  to  pass 
through  the  darkest,  deepest,  woefullest,  yet 
mightiest  upburst  of  his  genius,  which  constitutes 
the  Second  Period  of  his  Life-drama,  that  of  his 
great  tragedies.  Such  is  the  truly  Olympian  age  of 
his  creativity,  into  which  Henry  V  opens  a  lead 
better  than  any  other  of  his  plays.  For  its  all-hailed 
triumphant  hero  necessarily^  called  up  his  son  and 
successor,  the  weak,  ill-fated,  tragic  Henry  VI,  to 
the  mind  of  the  poet  who  had  already,  ten  or  a 
dozen  years  before,  written  or  helped  to  write  the 
sad  Trilogy  of  that  will-less  monarch's  woes.  Ver- 
ily the  latter 's  hapless  lot  was  ever  present  and 
deeply  seething  in  the  soul  of  Shakespeare  during 
the  incubation  and  composition  of  his  Henry  V, 
being  often  suggested  in  the  drama  itself,  and  di- 
rectly, even  emphatically  expressed  in  its  last  six 
lines : 

Henry  the  Sixth  in  infant  bands  crowned  king 
Of  France  and  England,  did  this  king  succeed ; 

Whose  state  so  many  had  the  managing 

That  they  lost  France  and  made  his  England 
bleed ; 


HENBT    V.  421 

Which  oft  our  stage  hath  shown;  and  for  their 

sake 
In  your  fair  minds  let  this    (play)    acceptance 

take. 

In  this  passage  the  poet  as  with  a  low  under- 
breath  hints  of  the  awful  nemesis  of  Agincourt 
turned  back  upon  England — a  great  triumph  for 
Henry  V,  but  a  greater  calamity  for  his  heir  Henry 
VI ;  a  sudden  victory  for  a  day,  a  lasting  defeat  for 
all  time.  Such  was  the  maddened  irony  of  History 
which  Shakespeare  could  not  help  realizing  men- 
tally in  its  full  intensity,  as  he  crushed  his  over- 
flowing soul  through  his  penpoint  into  the  manu- 
script of  this  drama  of  Henry  V.  We  may  hearken 
him  pouring  forth  his  very  selfhood  into  the  prayer 
of  the  King  just  before  the  fight  of  Agincourt,  as 
the  latter  cries  out  in  agonizing  supplication  ''0 
God  of  battles ' ',  he  being  wrung  with  the  presenti- 
ment of  coming  retribution  now  due  to  his  family 
on  account  of  its  blood-guilt  toward  Richard  II : 

Not  to-day,  0  Lord — 

0  not  to-day,  think  not  upon  tho  fault 
My  father  made  in  compassing  the  crown ! 

1  Richard 's  body  have  interred  new, 

And  on  it  have  bestowed  more  contrite  tears 
Than  issued  from  it  forced  drops  of  blood. 

So  that  original  deed  of  wrong  has  propagated  it- 
self along  with  the  royal  inheritance  in  the  heir 
who  now  seeks  to  countervail  its  curse  by  peniten- 
tial works : 


422  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

Five  hundred  poor  I  have  in  yearly  pay 
Who  twice  a-day  their  withered  hands  hold  up 
Toward  Heaven,  to  pardon  blood — 

blood  spilled  in  that  heinous  crime  against  an  an- 
nointed  king,  such  as  I  am  now.  Still  further  runs 
the  atonement : 

And  I  have  built 

Two  chantries  where  sad  and  solemn  priests 

Still  sing  for  Richard's  soul. 

But  that  is  not  enough;  nay,  it  is  quite  impossible 
now  to  do  adequate  penance  for  the  remission  of 
such  a  Heaven-defying  sin: 

More  will  I  do; 
Though  all  that  I  can  do  is  nothing  worth, 
Since  that  my  penitence  comes  after  all, 
Imploring  pardon. 

Why  this  closing  note  of  despair?  Evidently  the 
King  is  not  yet  ready  to  make  complete  the  full 
process  of  repentance,  which  lacks  the  final  act  of 
renunciation  and  restitution,  that  of  surrendering 
all  the  gain  of  the  evil  deed  (the  satisf actio  operis). 
At  this  point  we  may  well  listen,  for  the  sake  of 
its  added  emphasis,  to  a  similar  thrill  of  anguish 
in  the  nearly  cotemporaneous  Hamlet  drama,  in 
which  there  appears  another  King  (Claudius)  who 
in  prayer  beseeches  forgiveness  without  the  full 
reparation  for  his  guilty  deed : 

Forgive  me  my  foul  murder! — 
That  cannot  be,  since  I  am  still  possessed 


HEN  BY    V.  423 

Of  those  effects  for  which  I  did  the  murder — 

My  crown,  mine  own  ambition,  and  my  queen. 

.  May  one  be  pardoned  and  retain  the  offence  ? — 

Tis  not  so  above. — 

Thus  the  two  Kings,  of  England  and  of  Den- 
mark, confess  their  common  failure  in  the  work  of 
atonement  for  their  transgression. 

Through  his  repetition  of  such  despairful  con- 
trition sprung  of  misdoing,  we  have  to  question 
Shakespeare  himself  if  he  ever  experienced  these 
racking  throes  of  conscience  which  he  has  so  subtly 
yet  so  mightily  expressed  in  his  hero?  Surely  not 
for  any  blood-guilt,  there  is  no  evidence  of  that  red 
dye  against  him;  still  his  transgression  he  must 
have  felt  with  all  his  deeply  poetic  sensitiveness 
and  imagination,  and  have  suffered  paroxysms  of 
remorse  so  that  he  would  often  cry  out  through  the 
mask  of  his  characters : 

May  one  be  pardoned  and  retain  the  offence? 
Try  what  repentance  can;  what  can  it  not? 
Yet  what  can  it  when  one  cannot  repent  ? 
0  wretched  state!    0  bosom  black  as  death! 
0  limed  soul — 

So  the  blood-guilty  Danish  king  agonizes  when  he 
summons  before  his  own  judgment-seat  the  final 
necessary  act  for  completing  his  repentance,  but 
left  undone.  Now  the  poet  in  more  than  one  Son- 
net voices  himself  to  be  in  a  similar  condition,  using 
directly  the  first  person,  as  in  Sonnet  120: 


424  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA, 

And  for  that  sorrow  which  I  then  did  feel 
Needs  must  I  under  my  transgression  bow, 
Unless  my  nerves  were  brass  or  hammered  steel. 
For  if  you  were  by  my  unkindness  shaken, 
As  I  by  yours,  you've  passed  a  Hell  of  Time — 

(not  quite  the  same  as  our  petty  profanity,  a  hell 
of  a  time,  since  it  suggests  all  Time  turned  to  a 
a  Hell).  Thus  the  poet  gives  us  brief  glimpses  into 
his  personal  Inferno  with  its  tortures  of  rem- 
iniscence. 

Such  is  King  Henry  V  just  before  Agincourt 
racked  by  conscience,  yet  revealing  his  loftiest 
and  worthiest  in  the  very  pinch  of  his  sorest  trial. 
But  after  Agincourt  what  will  be  his  behavior, 
when  the  overwhelming  and  unexpected  victory  has 
been  won?  It  must  be  acknowledged  that  he  de- 
teriorates in  success,  he  sinks  to  a  far  lower  level 
of  character  in  the  very  uplift  of  his  triumph.  He 
woos  and  weds  Katherine  the  daughter  of  the 
French  King,  with  a  flippancy  and  downright 
mockery,  not  to  speak  of  indelicacy,  which  causes 
the  shocked  reader  to  wince  and  wonder  what  such 
an  abrupt  descent  from  his  spirit's  grandeur  can 
mean.  In  this  respect  the  Fifth  Act  quite  reverses 
and  drags  down  the  heavenly-thoughted  Fourth 
Act  to  an  equality  with  the  ribaldry  of  Boar's 
Head.  So  we  now  hear  the  victorious  young  Mon- 
arch make  unlovely  love  to  his  forthcoming  royal 
spouse:  ''Shall  not  thou  and  I,  between  Saint 
Denis   and   Saint   George,    compound   a   boy,   half 


SONNETS     {fSOMIC)  425 

French  half  English,  that  shall  go  to  Constanti- 
nople and  take  the  Turk  by  the  beard  ? ' '  Thus  we 
are  reminded  to  see  again  Prince  Hal  obscenely 
joking  with  Falstaff  at  Eastcheap  in  the  presence 
of  Doll  Tearsheet. 

But  what  must  the  poet  have  recalled  and  felt 
piercing  through  his  soul  as  he  drew  such  a  gro- 
tesque picture?  He  had  already  portrayed  and 
had  often  seen  acted  "on  our  stage"  the  reign  of 
that  ''boy  half  English  half  French",  Henry  VI, 
who,  instead  of  being  able  to  ''take  the  Turk  by 
the  beard"  in  Constantinople,  will  be  dethroned, 
imprisoned  and  done  to  death  in  London — the  last 
act  of  the  long  Lancastrian  tragedy.  And  this  so 
lovelessly  wooed  and  wedded  Katherine,  will  be 
succeeded  by  Margaret,  "the  she-wolf  of  France", 
who  is  turned  loose  upon  England  whose  people 
will  be  harried  deathward  through  her  ambition 
and  cruelty,  in  a  kind  of  secret  retribution  for 
what  they  have  done  to  her  country.  She  becomes 
the  incarnate  Nemesis  of  Agincourt  for  the  con- 
queror, which  victory  is  thus  the  grand  English- 
historical  tragedy  in  Shakespeare,  who  therewith 
I)ersonally  seems  to  be  passing  over  into  his  new 
tragic  Period. 

For  this  reason  the  student  of  Shakespearian 
biography  will  ponder  anew  these  last  two  Acts  of 
King  Henry  V,  especially  in  their  relation  to  the 
succeeding  historic  Trilogy  of  King  Henry  VI,  to 
catch  some  glimpses  into  the  deepest  and  darkest 
node  of  the  poet's  Life-drama.     Thus  we  behold 


426  SHAKESPEABE^S    LIFE-DBAMA 

him  in  one  v.ay  returning  upon  himself,  going 
backward  and  connecting  with  his  earliest  work; 
but  in  another  and  far  profounder  way  we  are  to 
trace  him  moving  forward  into  the  new  and  su- 
preme stage  of  his  career.  Still  with  him  we  must 
share  the  pang  of  it,  for  by  the  necessity  of  his 
spirit's  development,  his  Happy  Sexennium  he  has 
now  to  leave  behind,  and  start  to  live  his  mightily 
tragic  Period  in  the  very  creation  of  his  mightiest 
Tragedies. 

III. 

Sonnets. 

Let  the  observant  reader  here  take  note  that  we 
again  pick  up  the  Sonnets  as  a  continuous  strand 
of  Shakespeare 's  life  and  of  its  expression.  A  part 
of  them  belong  to  the  present  Epoch;  indeed  a 
number  of  commentators  throw  all  of  them  into 
these  six  years  (1594-1600)  ;  yea,  there  are  several 
expounders  who  would  confine  the  entire  series 
within  some  three  years  of  this  Sexennium — a  great 
mistake  to  our  thinking,  but  fortunately  as  yet  not 
very  contagious. 

Accordingly,  we  shall  here  re-affirm  that  these 
Sonnets  are  primarily  to  be  looked  at  as  a  poetic 
diary  which  reaches  through  many  years  of  vary- 
ing experiences,  a  score  of  them  probably,  and 
which  definitely  terminates  in  1609,  the  date  of 
their  publication.  Also  they  mirror  the  personal 
side  of  the  poet — his  multifarious  stages  of  devel- 
opment both  in  his  spirit  and  in  his  art,  as  well  as 


SONNETS     (COMIC)  427 

his  lighter  moods  and  caprices.  At  times  they 
seem  a  mere  external  sport,  or  versified  gimcrack, 
with  mystification  enough;  but  at  their  best  they 
utter  the  deepest  thoughts  as  well  as  the  most  pas- 
sionate throbs  of  Shakespeare's  soul.  Above  all, 
they  reflect  in  their  total  sweep  the  inner  psychical 
movement  of  the  poet's  Life-drama. 

So  it  comes  that  we  shall  endeavor  to  show  in 
the  present  Epoch  the  small  private  stream  of  Son- 
nets running  along  with  or  perchance  underneath 
the  full  tide  of  the  public  Dramas,  and  forming 
the  lyrical  more  internal  counterpart  to  the  more 
external  dramative  element,  which  has  been  set 
forth  in  the  foregoing  account  of  Comedies  and 
Histories,  eleven  plays  all  told.  There  is  no  inten- 
tion here  to  select  all  the  Sonnets  which  may  be 
assigned  to  this  Epoch,  but  simply  to  choose  a  few 
characteristic  ones  which  will  illustrate  its  leading 
phases. 

I.  The  first  point  which  has  been  repeatedly 
emphasized  is  that  this  is  Shakespeare's  recon- 
ciled, distinctively  harmonious  time,  more  than  any 
other  of  his  entire  life.  Hence  we  have  entitled  it 
his  Happj^  Sexennium,  during  which  he  writes  no 
tragedy,  but  gives  to  his  plays  a  happy  outcome  on 
the  whole,  even  if  some  characters,  like  Hotspur, 
fall  by  the  wayside  in  the  sweep  of  the  action.  Now 
this  salient  feature  of  the  Epoch  is  decidedly 
marked  in  some  of  the  Sonnets,  which  seem,  there- 
fore, to  represent  the  poet's  prevailing  mood  as 
well  as  his  world-view  at  this  time. 


428  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

Of  course  the  chief  poetical  theme  as  well  as  the 
all-embracing  emotion  of  the  poet  is  love,  of  which 
the  unity,  constancy,  and  deep  contentment  find  ex- 
pression in  the  following  Sonnet  (105)  : 

Let  not  my  love  be  called  idolatry, 
Nor  my  beloved  as  an  idol  show. 
Since  all  alike  my  songs  and  praises  be 
To  one,  of  one,  still  such  and  ever  so. 
Kind  is  my  love  to-day,  to-morrow  kind, 
Still  constant  in  a  wondrous  excellence; 
Therefore  my  verse,  to  constancy  confined, 
One  thing  expressing,  leaves  out  difference. 

Such  we  may  take  as  a  sort  of  motto  to  the  Sexen- 
nium,  in  which  the  poet's  verse  sets  to  music  the 
oneness  and  the  concordance  of  the  world  and  of 
himself.  In  the  second  part  of  the  same  Sonnet, 
he  gives  his  theme  a  new  peculiar  turn,  which  may 
be  called  Platonic,  since  it  recalls  a  famous  tri- 
plicity  of  the  old  Greek  philosopher  known  in  our 
later  English  as  the  True,  the  Beautiful,  and  the 
Good,  which,  however,  are  together  attuned  to  the 
same  underlying  monochord  of  felicity: 

Fair,  kind,  and  true,  is  all  my  argument, — 
Fair,  kind,  and  true,  varying  to  other  words; 
And  in  this  change  is  my  invention  spent, 
Three  themes  in  one,  which  wondrous  scope 

affords. 
Fair,  kind,  and  true,  have  often  lived  alone. 
Which  three  till  now,  never  kept  seat  in  one. 


SONNETS     (COMIC)  429 

This  curious  item  we  may  regard  as  Shakespeare's 
own  philosophic  summary,  in  abstract  rhymed 
speech,  of  his  writings  during  this  Epoch,  for  it 
will  hardly  apply  so  well  to  any  other  time  of  his 
life.  The  foregoing  ''three  themes  in  one"  show 
now  the  conscious,  reflective  purpose  of  the  poet, 
who  thus  suddenly  turns  philosopher  in  thought 
and  nomenclature,  affirming  their  ''wondrous 
scope"  in  his  works  and  their  "varying  to  other 
words"  in  his  various  dramas,  for  instance.  So  we 
may  in  this  subtly  significant  passage  detect  Shake- 
speare affirming  that  the  True,  Beautiful  and  Good 
' '  is  all  my  argument ' ',  the  content  of  all  my  poetry 
in  my  present  stage  of  mind,  which  (we  may  here 
forecast)  will  soon  change  with  a  tremendous  re- 
bound the  other  way. 

One  other  little  bit  with  a  somewhat  different 
turn  may  be  here  set  down,  in  which  the  poet  pro- 
tests his  constancy  and  return  after  some  ab- 
sence (109)  : 

0  never  say  that  I  was  false  of  heart, 
Though  absence  seemed  my  flame  to  qualify. 
As  easy  might  I  from  myself  depart 
As  from  my  soul  which  in  thy  breast  doth  lie : 
That  is  my  home  of  love. — 

Perhaps  here  we  catch  an  early  glimpse  of  the 
Dark  Lady  whose  nameless  nebulous  shape  fleets  off 
and  on  through  the  whole  line  of  these  Sonnets, 
striking  in  him  the  full  gamut  of  his  emotional 
nature  from  love's  bliss  to  its  last  damnation. 


430  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

II.  The  second  leading  characteristic  which  has 
been  stressed  as  strongly  marking  the  present 
Epoch,  is  the  poet's  reaction  from  his  former  wild 
life  and  revolt  against  the  established  institutional 
order,  which  revolt  he  had  not  only  lived  but  also 
represented  in  his  earlier  writings.  Still  now  he 
has  turned  away  from  the  injfluence  of  the  anti- 
social Marlowe  and  from  the  wild  comradery  of 
poetic  world-stormers,  and  has  become  the  defender 
of  tradition  and  its  institutions,  confessing  his 
previous  lapse  with  a  note  of  penitential  sorrow, 
but  also  proclaiming  his  present  recovery  (Sonnet 
110)  : 

Alas!  'tis  true,  I  have  gone  (ill)  here  and  there, 

And  made  myself  a  motley  to  the  view. 

Gored  mine  own  thoughts,  sold  cheap  what  is 

most  dear. 
Made  old  offenses  of  affections  new ; 
Most  true  it  is  that  I  have  looked  on  truth 
Askance  and  strangely; — but  by  all  above. 
These  blenches  gave  my  heart  another  youth, 
And  worse  essays  proved  thee  my  best  of  love. 
Now  all  is  done,   (I)   have  what  shall  have  no 

end. — 

Many  different  interpretations  have  been  given  of 
these  lines;  but  whatever  may  be  their  special 
meaning,  they  show  one  clear  unmistakeable  pur- 
port :  the  poet 's  deep-totied  regret  over  his  former 
time  of  transgression,  and  his  turn  to  a  new  stage 
of  life,  to  ''another  youth"  in  heart  and  in  crea- 


SONNETS     (COMIC)  431 

tion.  Moreover  the  word  motley  seems  a  hint  of  his 
dramatic  work,  which  he  confesses  to  have  prosti- 
tuted to  gain,  or  to  applause,  and  thus  to  ''have 
gored  his  own  thoughts,  sold  cheap  what  is  most 
dear".  Still  he  has  risen  out  of  that  time  of 
eclipse,  rejuvenated  seemingly  just  through  these 
"blenches",  or  aberrations  of  conduct.  So  he  has 
won  by  experience  a  higher  point  of  life's  renewal, 
which  we  may  identify  as  his  Happy  Sexennium, 
both  in  his  soul  and  in  his  work. 

It  should  be  noted  that  the  foregoing  nine  lines, 
penetrating,  transparent,  and  profoundly  intercon- 
nected, are  followed  by  five  lines  of  quite  the  op- 
posite character,  apparently  to  make  up  the  full 
quatorzain.  The  same  difficulty  will  often  puzzle 
the  reader,  and  perhaps  drive  him  to  think  that  the 
single  Sonnet  within  its  own  little  confine  can  at 
times  show  as  much  disorder  and  lack  of  inner  con- 
tinuity as  the  whole  body  of  Sonnets.  Especially 
does  there  seem  to  have  been  a  lurking  temptation 
to  tag  on  to  a  bright  jet  of  perspicuous  and  fluid 
verse  an  obscure  and  quite  worthless  padding,  that 
the  number  of  lines  be  stretched  out  to  the  regular 
quota  of  fourteen. 

III.  Love,  under  one  form  or  other,  must  be 
deemed  the  dominant  principle  or  energy  of  the 
present  Epoch,  being  specially  manifested  and 
made  real  in  its  eight  Comedies.  ' '  The  marriage  of 
true  minds ' '  in  man  and  woman  is  the  grand  partu- 
rient comic  theme,  bringing  forth  the  ultimate  har- 
mony, the  most  lasting  reconciliation  possible  to 


432  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

this  separative  human  individuality  of  ours.  It 
would  seem  to  be  the  visible  present  appearance  of 
our  immortal  portion  to  Shakespeare,  who  hymns: 
''Love  is  not  love  which  alters  when  it  alteration 
finds",  being  ''an  ever-fixed  mark",  and  not 
"Time's  fool". 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  completer  incarnation 
of  Love,  according  to  our  poet,  is  now  found  in  the 
woman.  Hence  he  has  in  this  Epoch  created  that 
ever-marching  line  of  female  characters,  at  the 
head  of  whom  rise  Portia,  followed  by  Rosalind, 
down  to  "sweet  Anne  Page".  It  is  strange:  in 
them  we  are  made  to  feel  that  some  of  our  closest 
and  dearest  acquaintances  have  never  lived,  that 
in  Shakespeare's  folk  the  undying  soul  has  never 
had  to  pass  out  and  over  the  bourne,  that  the  re- 
incarnated spirit  (by  the  actor)  has  never  been  in- 
carnate. All  through  the  World's  Literature  as 
well  as  through  our  own  lives  stalk  those  ghostly 
yet  intimate  associates  of  ours — Hamlet,  Goethe's 
Faust,  Homer's  Helen  and  also  Shakespeare's 
Helena.  Thus  there  is  an  overworld  of  ideal  deni- 
zens living  with  us  breathers,  whereof  Shakespeare 
may  be  deemed  the  greatest  creator. 

In  several  Sonnets  the  poet  has  sought  to  express 
this  Love  as  absolute,  self-contained,  truly  the  uni- 
versal energy  in  his  writ.  We  shall  cite  the  weight- 
iest one  for  the  reader's  oft  repeatable  contempla- 
tion (116)  : 

Let  me  not  to  the  marriage  of  true  minds 
Admit  impediments.    Love  is  not  love 


SONNETS     (COMIC)  433 

Which  alters  when  it  alteration  finds, 

Or  bends  with  the  remover  to  remove : 

0,  no !   it  is  an  ever-fixed  mark, 

That  looks  on  tempests  and  is  never  shaken; 

It  is  the  star  to  every  wandering  bark 

Whose  worth 's  unknown,  although  his  height  be 

taken. 
Love's  not  Time's  fool,  though  rosy  lips  and 

cheeks 
Within  his  bending  sickle's  compass  come; 
Love  alters  not  with  his  brief  hours  and  weeks, 
But  bears  it  out  even  to  the  edge  of  doom. 

Very  massive,  lofty,  and  sunlike  rolls  the  temper 
of  these  lines,  which  assert  not  only  the  constancy 
but  the  eternity  of  love  in  ''true  minds".  Yet  the 
slack  snapper  may  be  heard  in  the  same  Sonnet's 
last  distich,  which  here  seems  to  call  up  Shake- 
speare looking  backward  at  his  writings  and  affirm- 
ing the  above  doctrine  to  be  the  prhiciple  of  his 
composition : 

If  this  be  error  and  upon  me  proved, 
I  never  writ — 

any  love-plays,  and  furthermore  I  never  experi- 
enced love  for  any  human  being.  So  we  may  con- 
strue this  cloudy  close  whose  nebulosity  contrasts 
with  the  previous  sunshine  of  the  Sonnet. 

IV.  Along  with  this  return  and  restoration  from 
his  error  and  estrangement,  the  poet  in  the  Sonnets 
gives  us  repeated  glimpses  of  his  philosophy  of  life. 


434  SHAEESPEAEE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

The  spirit's  i)ower  of  self -recovery  after  the  lapse 
he  proclaims  with  emphasis   (109)  : 

So  that  myself  bring  water  for  my  stain. — 
Never  believe,  though  in  my  nature  reigned 
All  frailties  that  besiege  all  kinds  of  blood, 
That  it  could  so  preposterously  be  stained. 

The  scheme  of  evil  not  only  in  the  world  but  in  the 
individual  we  find  him  probing  to  the  bottom,  and 
''creating  every  bad  a  perfect  best".  He  proclaims 
"the  benefit  of  ill",  and  visions  beatifically  ''that 
better  is  by  evil  still  made  better",  and  even  from 
the  hardest  blow  to  his  heart 's  tenderost  passion  he 
sings  his  happy  recovery  (119)  : 

And  ruined  love,  when  it  is  built  anew, 
Grows  fairer  than  at  first,  more  strong,  far 

greater. 
So  I  return,  rebuked,  to  my  content. 
And  gain  by  ill  thrice  more  than  I  have  spent. 

Such  is  the  desperate  optimism  which  chants  the 
lofty  paean  of  the  poet's  triumph  over  the  de- 
stroyer within  and  without. 

Through  the  dramas  of  this  Happy  Sexennium 
runs  a  similar  strain  to  that  of  the  foregoing  Son- 
nets. Especially  the  Lancastrian  Trilogy  dwells 
upon  the  soul 's  dip  into  evil  and  the  method  of  its 
restoration.  Already  we  have  emphasized  the  char- 
acter and  career  of  Henry  V  who  illustrates  this 
deepest  process  of  human  experience — ^the  descent 
into  transgression  and  the  way  out.     Also  it  has 


SONNETS     (COMIC)  435 

been  noted  that  in  him  the  poet  is  recounting  the 
great  transition  of  his  own  soul-life,  which  gives 
the  inner  push  of  the  present  Epoch. 

Perhaps  the  culmination  and  summary  of  this 
whole  time  of  the  poet 's  new  evolution  we  may  find 
in  the  words  of  Henry  V  at  the  grand  crisis  just 
before  the  battle  of  Agincourt.  The  king,  as  if  at 
his  confessional  and  in  presence  of  Eternal  Truth, 
puts  his  highest  self-expression  into  the  form  of  a 
prayer : 

God  Almighty ! 
There  is  some  soul  of  goodness  in  things  evil, 
Would  men  observingly  distil  it  out; — 
Thus  may  we  gather  honey  from  the  weed, 
And  make  a  moral  of  the  devil  himself. 

Hence  old  Satan  can  be,  and  has  been  transformed 
by  the  transformed  man,  and  the  bad  itself  be- 
comes the  grand  means  and  incentive  to  the  good : 

For  our  bad  neighbor  makes  us  early  stirrers, 
Which  is  both  healthful  and  good  husbandry ; 
Besides  they  are  our  outward  consciences, 
And  preachers  to  us  all,  admonishing 
That  we  should  dress  us  fairly  for  our  end. 

So  he  would  make  sin  a  good  clergyman  or  preacher 
whose  sermon  turns  on  the  ministry  of  transgres- 
sion. 

Thus  it  is  that  in  this  poetic  diary  of  the  Sonnets 
we  hear  at  certain  places  an  echo  of  the  poet's 
Happy  Sexennium,  of  his  reconciled  Epoch,  whose 
key-note  we  may  catch  undertoning  all  his  writings 


436  SEAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

during  the  present  time.  And  we  find  the  same 
general  character  in  the  external  occurrences  of 
his  life.  Even  mistake,  error,  wrong,  transgres- 
sion— all  the  negative  phases  of  existence — are 
made  remedial  toward  a  higher  human  worthiness, 
if  not  perfection. 

Here  a  warning  may  be  inserted.  The  dates  of 
these  Sonnets  singly  or  in  their  groups  have  never 
been  ascertained.  Only  one  fixed  time-limit  for 
them  as  a  whole  is  fully  certified — the  year  1609 
when  they  were  first  printed.  Still  their  great  dif- 
ferences of  mood,  thought,  style,  literary  value, 
are  not  only  noticeable,  but  demand  some  kind  of 
correlation  with  the  poet's  entire  achievement.  As 
already  stated,  they  impress  themselves  vividly 
upon  us  as  the  writer's  intimate  self-communings, 
as  his  heart 's  confessions  while  passing  through  the 
various  crises  of  his  Life-drama. 

V.  And  still  a  subtler,  deeper  mystery  lurks  in 
these  Sonnets,  which  we  shall  here  merely  indicate 
with  brief  illustration.  Through  quite  all  the 
many  years  of  these  verses  fleets  a  baffling  shape 
which  is  often  declared  by  the  poet  to  be  his  secret 
inspiration,  his  ''tenth  Muse",  evidently  a  woman 
who,  after  Shakespeare's  own  description,  has  been 
called  The  Dark  Lady.  In  more  than  one  Sonnet 
he  has  placed  her  at  the  heart  of  his  creative 
energy,  as  in  No.  38 : 

How  can  my  Muse  want  subject  to  invent, 
While  thou  dost  breathe,  that  pour'st  into  my 
verse 


SONNETS     (COMIC)  437 

Thine  own  sweet  argument,  too  excellent 
For  every  vulgar  paper  to  rehearse? 
0  give  thyself  the  thanks,  if  aught  in  me 
Worthy  perusal  stand  against  thy  sight ; 
For  who's  so  dumb  that  cannot  write  to  thee 
When  thou  thyself  dost  give  invention  light? 
Be  thou  the  tenth  Muse,  ten  times  more  in  worth 
Than  those  old  nine  which  rhymers  invocate ; 
And  he  that  calls  on  thee  let  him  bring  forth 
Eternal  numbers  that  outlive  long  date. 
If  my  slight  Muse  do  please  these  curious  days, 
The  pain  be  mine,  but  thine  shall  be  the  praise. 

May  we  not  see  in  this  fervent  homage  the  real  in- 
spirer  of  Portia  and  Rosalind,  the  living  woman 
*'that  pour'st  into  my  verse  thine  own  sweet  argu- 
ment"? And  in  the  next  Sonnet  (39)  we  hear  a 
like  declaration:  *'thou  art  all  the  better  part  of 
me".  Of  course  there  has  been  much  controversy 
over  this  *' tenth  Muse";  man  or  woman  is  he  or 
she — or  possibly  neither  the  one  nor  the  other? 
Most  famous  of  all  identifications  is  the  one  made 
by  Thomas  Tyler,  who  has  at  least  labeled  her  with 
a  lasting  name,  that  of  Mary  Fitton,  though  the 
correctness  of  it  is  stoutly  contested.  But  how- 
ever named  or  nameless  she  be,  the  writer 's  state  of 
mind  is  not  ambiguous.  And  that  is  just  what  the 
best  reader  wants  to  hear  about,  feeling  in  it  the 
poet  as  he  touches  salient  points  of  his  biography. 

Already  we  have  stressed  Shakespeare 's  devotion 
to  love  in  general  without  specially  designating 


438  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

any  person  as  its  object.  Love  is  not  *' Time's 
fooP'  for  ''it  alters  not  when  it  alteration  finds", 
but  ''bears  it  out  even  to  the  edge  of  doom"  (see 
preceding  citation  of  Sonnet  116).  This  we  may 
conceive  as  the  poet 's  statement  of  his  principle  or 
of  the  law  of  his  genius,  Love  universal,  to  which 
we  can  now  add  its  particular  side  or  Love  indi- 
vidual as  incarnate  in  this  Dark  Lady.  For  she  is 
exalted  to  be  the  one  original  source  whence  spring 
all  his  diversified  creations,  for  instance  in  Son- 
net 53 : 

Describe  Adonis  and  the  counterfeit 

Is  poorly  imitated  after  you; 

On  Helen's  cheek  all  art  of  beauty  set. 

And  you  in  Grecian  tires  are  painted  new: 

Speak  of  the  spring  and  f oison  of  the  year. 

The  one  doth  shadow  of  your  beauty  show, 

The  other  as  your  bounty  doth  appear — 

And  you  in  every  blessed  shape  we  know. 

In  all  external  grace  you  have  some  part, 

But  you  like  none,  none  you,  for  constant  heart. 

This  sets  up  you  as  the  creative  ideal  which  utters 
itself  through  the  poet  in  all  beautiful  and  bounti- 
ful appearances  of  art  and  nature.  But  who  is  this 
youf  That  is  the  burning  question  of  the  Sonnets 
yesterday  and  still  to-day,  whereto  all  sorts  of 
answers  have  been  given.  Ours  is:  You  are  the 
Dark  Lady,  deeply  veiled  in  your  pronominal  dis- 
guise here  as  elsewhere,  while  I,  the  self-revealing 
poet,  William  Shakespeare,  unmask  myself  to  the 
sunlight  in  every  line. 


SONNETS     (COMIC)  439 

Such  is  in  general  the  mood  of  unclouded  bliss 
expressing  Shakespeare's  happy  love  during  this 
Happy  Sexennium.  But  even  in  its  sheen  certain 
deep-shaded  rifts  are  starting  to  make  themselves 
felt  and  sung,  wherein  his  radiant  felicity  begins 
to  show  streaks  of  the  coming  eclipse.  A  highly 
ecstasied  example  of  this  change  from  love's  pure 
sun-up  to  its  hurried  obscuration  is  given  in  Son- 
net No.  33 : 

Full  many  a  glorious  Morning  have  I  seen 
Flatter  the  mountain  tops  with  sovereign  eye, 
Kissing  with  golden  face  the  meadows  green, 
Gilding  pale  streams  with  heavenly  alchemy — 
Anon  permit  the  basest  clouds  to  ride 
AVitli  ugly  rack  on  his  celestial  face, 
And  from  the  forlorn  world  his  visage  hide 
Stealing  unseen  to  West  with  this  disgrace : 
Even  so  my  Sun  one  early  morn  did  shine 
With  all-triumphant  splendor  on  my  brow; 
But  out !  alack !  He  was  but  one  hour  mine 
The  region  cloud  hath  masked  Him  for  me  now. 

So  Love's  luminary  begins  to  grow  dim  till  it  dark- 
ens to  deepest  tragedy,  whose  midnight  act,  how- 
ever, lies  beyond  the  present  Epoch.  As  usual 
there  has  been  a  deadly  difference  of  opinion  over 
that  little  pronoun  he — what,  whom  does  it  stand 
for — literal  Sun,  Love,  some  man  (Pembroke, 
Southampton  etc.),  some  woman  (the  Dark  Lady, 
or  still  another)  ?  But  whatever  be  the  answer,  the 
psychical  change  from  felicity  to  gloom  is  brought 


440  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

out  with  telling  strokes,  and  that  is  the  main  point 
with  the  poet,  who  lets  himself  glow  forth  to  the 
full  while  the  other  is  persistently  kept  masked 
under  a  cloud. 

A  further  stage  in  this  reciprocal  tangle  of  heart- 
throes  may  be  found  in  the  next  Sonnet  (34)  : 

'Tis  not  enough  that  through  the  cloud  thou 

break. 
To  dry  the  rain  on  my  storm-beaten  face, 
For  no  man  well  of  such  a  salve  can  speak 
That  heals  the  wound  and  cures  not  the  disgrace  : 
Though  thou  repent,  yet  I  have  still  the  loss. 
The  offender's  sorrow  lends  but  weak  relief 
To  him  that  bears  the  strong  offense's  cross. 
Ah!  but  those  tears  are  pearl  which  thy  love 

sheds. 
And  they  are  rich,  and  ransom  all  ill  deeds. 

Still  the  poet  now  will  accept  ''those  tears"  (hardly 
shed  for  him  by  a  noble  Lord  like  Southampton, 
easily  by  a  repentantly  weeping  woman),  and  will 
make  them  ''ransom  all  ill  deeds".  So  reconcilia- 
tion comes  to  the  pair,  as  at  the  end  of  the  comedy. 
But  the  crisis  will  arrive  hereafter  when  the  wound 
of  infidelity  cuts  too  deep  for  restoration,  so  that 
the  poet  will  cause  tragic  blood  to  spill  from  the 
faithless  woman's  heart,  at  least  on  the  stage. 

Through  such  choosing  from  this  diamond  heap 
of  tumbled  sonnets — flawless  and  flawed — we  put 
together  a  little  anthology  which  seeks  to  mirror 
the  varying  turns  of  Shakespeare's  Happy  Sexen- 


SONNETS    (COMIC)  441 

nium,  thus  paralleling  his  other  larger  public  work 
with  a  small  private  undercurrent  of  confession 
taken  from  his  poetic  diary.  It  may  be  repeated 
that  the  first  personal  pronoun  in  these  sonnets  is 
Shakespeare  undisguised,  hence  directly  self-reveal- 
ing, while  the  other  pronouns  wear  masks  quite  im- 
penetrable, and  I  believe  so  intended  by  the  poet. 

After  such  manner  the  three  literary  forms  of 
this  final  Epoch  of  Shakespeare's  Apprenticeship — 
Comedies,  Histories,  Sonnets — are  to  be  co-ordi- 
nated and  interrelated,  whereby  they  may  be  seen 
to  unite  fundamentally  in  one  ultimate  character- 
istic,— man's  reconciliation  with  himself  and  with 
his  world,  on  the  whole  his  glad  and  gladdening 
Epoch. 

But  just  look!  now  falls  into  our  poet's  Life- 
drama,  not  without  some  fitfully  flashing  fore- 
tokens, the  deepest,  dreadfullest  count erstroke  of 
human  existence — his  gladless,  fate-shent  time  of 
Tragedy. 

Retrospect  of  the  Period.  But  before  we  ad- 
vance to  this  coming  culmination  of  the  poet's 
Genius,  which  forms  a  wholly  new  Period  of  his 
biography,  let  us  take  a  look  backward  at  what  he 
has  passed  through  since  we  began  observing  his 
liondon  Pan-drama.  For  we  are  now  at  the  close 
of  that  busy  and  varied  discipline  of  the  poet 
which  we  have  called  his  Apprenticeship,  he  being 
still  the  apprentice  to  his  vocation  and  not  yet  the 
master  in  his  full  supremacy.  About  a  dozen  years 
it  has  lasted,  with  a  marvelous  poetic  productivity 


442  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

of  many  kinds.  Still  it  forms  but  one  stage — the 
first — of  Shakespeare's  total  achievement,  and 
hence  but  one  part  of  his  biography. 

In  the  first  place  the  reader  will  recall  that  this 
Apprenticeship  has  had  its  own  distinct  inner  move- 
ment, with  its  three  main  divisions,  which  we  have 
called  its  Epochs,  designating  each  of  them  after 
its  salient  characteristic  as  follows :  Collaboration, 
Imitation,  Origination.  Moreover  these  three  stages 
are  seen  to  form  together  a  single  process,  which 
interrelates  all  three  into  one  round  of  the  poet's 
spiritual  evolution.  It  is  at  this  point  that  the 
vigilant  reader  will  glimpse  Shakespeare's  indi- 
vidual Life-drama  rising  into  and  partaking  of  the 
movement  of  Universal  Biography. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  worth  while  to  look  back 
over  what  the  man  has  now  achieved,  and  to  give 
some  estimate  of  his  place  in  World-Literature. 
Shakespeare  has  already  made  himself  the  greatest 
dramatist  of  England  even  during  his  Apprentice- 
ship ;  indeed  it  may  be  affirmed  that  his  preceding 
twenty-two  dramas  along  with  his  other  verse 
pedestal  him  as  the  supreme  poet  of  the  English- 
speaking  folk  wherever  it  be  found.  He  outranks 
earlier  Chaucer  and  later  Milton,  perhaps  his  two 
chief  rivals  for  the  first  place  in  English  Letters, 
with  his  present  achievement.  If  we  pass  to  dif- 
ferent tongues  and  peoples,  Greek  Aeschylus  might 
equal  him  now,  and  possibly  Spanish  Calderon,  not 
to  mention  other  lofty  competitors  from  abroad. 
That  is,  Shakespeare  has  already  won  the  first  place 


TEE    MASTER'S    TRAGEDIES  443 

in  English  Literature  but  not  yet  in  World-Litera- 
ture. 

Now  this  is  the  next  step  to  which  he  pushes  for- 
ward, for  he  is  not  yet  the  full  peer  of  Homer, 
of  Dante  and  (we  would  add)  of  Goethe.  Behold 
him,  then,  rise  and  advance  with  new  and  mightier 
uplift,  winning  his  sovereign  place  among  the  au- 
thors of  the  Race 's  Literary  Bibles,  as  decreed  him 
by  the  Tribunal  of  the  Ages  sitting  in  judgment 
over  all  human  writ.  Such  is  the  grand  transition 
which  the  poet  is  now  to  make  in  his  experience 
and  to  express  in  his  art,  mounting  up  out  of  his 
First  Period  of  ever-unfolding  Apprenticeship  to 
his  Second  Period  of  completed  Mastery. 

At  this  point,  however,  it  may  be  mentioned  that 
the  present  book  has  fulfilled  its  chief  purpose, 
which  is  to  set  forth  as  fully  as  possible  the  outer 
rise  and  inner  evolution  of  Shakespeare  till  his 
present  culmination.  For  just  this  portion  of  the 
poet's  biography  seems,  as  we  would  unfold  it,  to 
have  been  hitherto  in  part  misconceived  and  in  part 
neglected.  Two  more  Periods  of  his  Life-drama 
are  to  follow,  but  they  are  to  be  treated  much  more 
briefly. 


SECOND  PERIOD. 

The  Master's  Tragedies. 

We  have  now  come  to  the  greatest  achievement 
of  the  greatest  Shakespeare,  according  to  the  con- 
sensus of  the  best  judges  during  the  three  centuries 
since  his  passing.  Still  loftier  often  runs  the  de- 
cision: these  nine  Shakespearian  tragedies  of  his 
Second  Period,  taken  together  as  a  whole,  are  to  be 
crowned  the  sovereign  writ  of  the  World's  Litera- 
ture. Accordingly  Shakespeare,  now  the  supreme 
hero  of  the  Word,  seems  to  be  rising  to  a  place 
alongside  or  even  above  the  supreme  heroes  of  the 
Deed — Caesar,  Charlemagne,  Napoleon — in  Univer- 
sal History.  At  any  rate  he  may  well  be  deemed 
the  master  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Word,  which  to-day 
promises  to  make  him  master  of  the  World's  Word. 

Here,  however,  we  may  foresay  that  it  is  not  at 
present  our  purpose  to  try  to  adjudge  the  literary 
value  of  these  Shakespearian  tragedies,  but  rather 
to  trace  and  to  bring  to  the  light  their  biographic 
purport,  which  lies  more  or  less  hidden  under  their 
extensive  stage  wardrobe.  The  circumstances  of 
(444) 


THE    MASTEB'S     TBAGEDIES  445 

his  time  as  well  as  his  spiritual  impress  are  crea- 
tively inwrought  into  all  his  works,  which  we  are 
to  unravel,  selecting  therefrom  his  distinctive 
lineaments,  and  weaving  them  together  into  the 
fabric  of  his  Life-drama. 

Unto  this  purpose  we  must  again,  when  we  read 
him,  lie  in  wait  for  Protean  Shakespeare,  so  that 
we  may  catch  him  talking  about  himself  in  what 
he  makes  his  characters  say.  A  personal  strain  of 
the  poet  has  often  been  detected  in  their  make-up, 
as  we  have  already  indicated.  We  may  well  hear 
his  own  individual  experience,  when  he  rises  into 
his  furiously  demonic  vein,  portraying  jealousy  in 
Othello,  ingratitude  in  Lear,  misanthropy  in  Ti- 
mon,  and  hurling  his  mighty  vocables  as  Zeus  does 
the  Olympian  thunderbolts.  His  highest  expres- 
sion always  is  instinct  with  self-expression. 

So  it  comes  that  Shakespeare  when  his  truly 
genetic  spell  is  on,  verily  obsesses  his  characters 
and  makes  them  utter  his  deepest  passion,  his  larg- 
est experience,  his  most  intimate  selfhood.  Still 
we  have  to  see  under,  or  rather  live  with  him  under, 
that  dramatic  mask  of  his,  which  is  the  native  garb 
of  his  very  soul.  Hence  the  great  tragic  personages 
of  this  Period,  vividly  individualized  as  they  are, 
we  have  ultimately  to  vision  as  the  poet 's  own  self- 
incarnations.  Thus  he  is  to  be  conceived  now  writ- 
ing his  innermost  autobiography.  But  first  let  us 
put  together  the  main  external  facts  of  this  time. 

I.  Nine  dramas  are  to  be  placed  in  this  Tragic 
Period — nine  and  no  more,  all  of  them  Tragedies, 


446  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

not  a  History  not  a  Comedy  among  them,  though 
both  history  and  comedy  have  their  undercurrents 
through  them.  The  next  fact  about  them  is  that 
these  nine  are  to  be  grasped,  interrelated,  and 
finally  organized  as  one  great  work — nine  acts,  so 
to  speak,  of  one  comprehensive  world-tragedy,  the 
mightiest  ever  yet  conceived  and  wrought  to  utter- 
ance in  human  speech.  This  unity  we  shall  try  to 
fetch  to  the  fore  in  our  exposition,  representing  as 
it  does  the  sovereign  phase  of  Shakespeare's  total 
Life-drama,  as  well  as  his  highest  creative  deed. 

Another  fact  to  be  emphasized  is  that  this  unique 
spell  of  the  poet's  creativity,  his  Tragic  Period,  ex- 
tends from  the  year  1600-1  till  1609-10,  as  near 
as  these  two  dates  marking  its  beginning  and  end, 
can  now  be  made  out.  Thus  the  nine  Tragedies 
run  through  nine  years,  which  gives  an  average  of 
one  a  year  for  their  composition,  though  of  course 
no  such  regular  annual  quota  is  provable.  And  it 
is  evident  that  some  of  these  dramas  required  for 
their  full  elaboration  a  much  longer  time  than 
others. 

Observed  also  should  be  the  point  that  the  poet 
during  this  acme  of  his  authorship  was  in  his 
middle  age,  being  about  thirty-six  years  old  when 
the  Period  opened,  and  forty-five  when  it  closed. 
Thus  he  stood  at  his  highest  physically  and  men- 
tally, and  did  his  supreme  work  mid  that  very 
flowering  of  human  existence,  as  our  days  ordi- 
narily run,  when  the  man's  maturity  is  still  inter- 
grown  and  upborne  with  youth's  fresh  energy.    So 


TEE    MASTER'S    TRAGEDIES  447 

his  greatest  Self  became  tragic.  Such  was  the 
English  poet's  ominous  prologue  to  the  coming 
Seventeenth  Century,  which  was  destined  to  be 
England's  most  turbulent  Century  since  her  Wars 
of  the  Roses,  with  whose  multitudinous  Tragedies 
Shakespeare  preluded  his  dramatic  career.  Thus 
in  a  way  he  now  goes  back  to  his  earliest  beginning, 
yet  with  a  vast  difference  in  worth  and  word. 

The  retrospective  reader  is  here  inclined  to  ex- 
claim :  What  a  brain-stunning  change  to  an  intense 
concentration  out  of  a  soul-scattering  diversity 
of  labors!  In  the  previous  First  Period  we  found 
Shakespeare  writing  every  sort  of  Drama,  History, 
Comedy,  and  also  Tragedy — likewise  every  sort  of 
Poetry,  Epic,  Lyric,  as  well  as  Dramatic :  thus  we 
went  straying  and  browsing  about  through  his 
lavish  abundance,  and  became  at  first  confused 
amid  the  poet's  somewhat  distracting  versatility. 
So  the  question  rises:  What  is  the  psychical 
source  of  such  a  mighty  condensation  of  the  Shake- 
spearian soul-world  to  the  point  of  its  hottest  tragic 
ignition  and  volcanic  eruption?  For,  that  is  what 
now  takes  place,  with  seeming  suddenness,  though 
in  reality  it  has  already  given  scattered  prophetic 
gleams  of  its  coming  outbreak  for  several  years. 
Such  is,  indeed,  the  poet's  subtlest  and  darkest 
psychological  problem,  with  which  we  have  to 
wrestle  during  the  present  Period,  and  which  will 
recur  repeatedly  for  fresh  illumination. 

Another  change,  striking  through  its  suddenness, 
may  be  here  set  down.     It  is  the  sharp  turn  from 


448  SHAKESPEARE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

joy  to  sorrow  in  the  creations  of  the  poet,  and  hence 
in  his  own  soul.  We  have  just  witnessed  his  Happy 
Sexennium,  six  prolific  years  of  work  reconciled, 
loveful,  essentially  featured  as  Comedy.  From  this 
prevailing  mood,  on  the  whole  so  self -centered  and 
contented,  we  mark  him  whirl  and  take  a  plunge 
into  the  last  depths  of  Tragedy.  Again  darts  up 
the  dark  enigma  of  Shakespeare's  profoundest 
spiritual  transition — his  turn  from  a  comic  har- 
monious world-view  to  his  deeply  tragic  night-side 
of  human  life.  But  to-day  our  whole  earth-ball 
ought  to  appreciate  this  fleet  change  from  sunshine 
to  all-menacing  obscuration  better  than  ever  before 
in  its  history. 

II.  Before  going  farther,  it  is  well  to  give  some 
account  of  these  nine  Tragedies,  which  now  consti- 
tute our  single  theme,  as  they  are  related  to  our 
poet's  biography.  Their  names  follow  one  an- 
other in  this  order:  (1)  Julius  Caesar,  (2)  Ham- 
let, (3)  Macbeth),  (4)  Timon  of  Athens,  (5)  King 
Lear,  (6)  Othello,  (7)  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  (8) 
Coriolanus,  (9)  Troilus  and  Cressida.  Such  is  our 
consecutive  tallj^  of  the  all-overtopping  nine,  along 
with  their  first  easy  linear  arrangement. 

The  next  problem  is  to  find  out  whether  this 
simple  line  does  not  break  up  and  form  cognate 
groups  of  plays.  Chronologically  it  is  now  agreed 
by  the  best  critics  that  the  first  two,  Julius  Caesar 
and  Hamlet,  are  quite  cotemporaneous,  and  are  kin- 
dred in  thought,  style,  characters,  and  especially 
in  their  tragic  thrust  or  prime  impulsion.    To  these 


THE    MASTEB'S    TRAGEDIES  449 

we  add  Macbeth  for  like  reasons.  So  we  have  con- 
structed our  first  group  of  three  Tragedies,  whose 
final  completion  lies  in  the  years  between  1600-1 
and  1603-4,  thus  embracing  about  three  years.  AH 
of  them  have  their  own  marked  individual  differ- 
ences, but  at  the  same  time  bear  a  strong  family 
likeness  to  one  another  in  several  common  traits. 
Now  to  our  mind  the  most  distinctive  and  decisive 
of  these  common  traits  is  that  each  of  the  three  has 
its  start  from  a  supernatural  urge  or  impact ;  that 
is,  the  primal  tragic  thrust  in  each  drama  drives 
from  an  Overworld  of  spirit  or  spirits  in  some  form. 
Thus  they  all  may  be  said  to  have  in  general  the 
same  original  forthright  push  into  being.  Hence 
we  shall  designate  this  First  Group,  or  chrono- 
logically this  First  Epoch  of  three  years,  the  other- 
worldly Group  of  Shakespeare's  middle-aged  Trag- 
edies (very  distinct  from  his  earlier  ones),  naming 
them  after  their  deepest  germinal  characteristic. 
So  it  comes  that  Julius  Caesar  with  its  over-ruling 
Spirit  of  Caesar,  Hamlet  with  its  pre-existent 
Ghost,  and  Macbeth  with  its  proi)hetic  Weird  Sis- 
ters, constitute  a  unique  class  by  themselves,  since 
these  supernatural  instruments  are  not  employed 
again  by  the  poet  in  his  present  Tragic  Period. 

The  next  best  defined  Group,  in  chronology  as 
well  as  in  outer  and  inner  character,  is  generally 
accepted  to  be  the  two  Roman  plays,  Antony  and 
Cleopatra  and  Coriolanus.  To  these  we  shall  con- 
join Troilus  and  Cressida,  about  which,  however, 
there  is  no  little  question  as  to  date,   dramatic 


450  SEAEESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

species,  and  authorship.  Thus  we  have  a  Group  of 
three  Tragedies  belonging  to  antique  Greco-Roman 
History,  and  sprung  as  to  theme  of  the  old  classic 
Mediterranean  civilisation.  Such  is  their  united 
far-off  historic  derivation  which  classifies  them  to- 
gether according  to  their  common  original  source. 
Hence  we  shall  name  this  Group  the  old-worldly 
(or  the  past-worldly)  Group  of  Shakespeare's  nine 
supreme  Tragedies,  whose  Epoch  lies  in  the  three 
years  between  1606-7  and  1609.  This  last  date 
(1609)  we  take  as  the  conclusion  of  the  entire 
Tragic  Period,  being  the  year  in  which  the  final 
drama  (Troilus  and  Cressida)  of  the  whole  series 
was  definitely  printed  and  given  to  the  public. 

We  have  now  accounted  for  and  put  into  order 
six  of  the  nine  Tragedies  under  purview,  arranging 
these  six  into  two  distinct  Groups,  the  first  and  the 
third.  There  remain  three  dramas,  Timon,  King 
Lear,  and  Othello,  which  on  the  whole  show  them- 
selves the  most  refractory  to  any  pervading  prin- 
ciple of  classification.  Still,  on  close  inspection,  we 
may  find  them  to  have  something  in  common  which 
will  bind  their  separated  natures  together  into 
unit}^,  forming  them  into  the  second  or  middle 
Group  (or  Epoch)  of  the  present  Period.  In  the 
first  place  all  three  have  no  outer  supernatural  im- 
pact for  starting  the  dramatic  action,  as  has  the 
First  Group ;  on  the  contrary  their  primal  tragic 
thrust  comes  from  within  the  man,  from  his  imme- 
diate self,  as  emotion,  passion,  thought.  In  the 
second  place  these  same  three  dramas  are  not  pro- 


TEE    MASTEB'^S    TE  AGE  DIES  451 

jected  into  a  great  historic  Past  of  the  world's 
civilisation,  as  is  the  Third  Group  above  consid- 
ered; rather  do  they  stress  the  immediate  present 
in  their  occurrences  and  characters,  though  their 
story  or  fable  be  located  in  the  far  aforetime  more 
or  less  dim.  These  three  middle  Tragedies,  accord- 
ingly, can  be  classed  into  one  Group,  the  second, 
which  may  be  labeled  the  present-worldly  Group, 
thus  showing  another  phase  of  the  same  determin- 
ing principle  which  underlies  the  other  two  Groups. 
Such  is,  as  we  conceive  it,  the  internal  organic 
order  of  these  nine  Tragedies,  being  interrelated 
according  to  their  essential  factor,  not  tumbled  to- 
gether after  some  merely  external  mark.  We  may 
recapitulate  these  Groups  and  their  designations  in 
one  brief  survey  as  follows: 

(1)  The  other-worldly  Group,  determined  su- 
pernaturally. 

(2)  The  present-worldly  Group,  determined  by 
man's  own  nature. 

(3)  The  past-worldly  Group,  determined  his- 
torically. 

Of  course  this  order  is  to  receive  its  final  con- 
firmation in  the  special  treatment  of  the  plays, 
which  must  here  be  deferred.  Meantime  let  the  all- 
testing  reader  keep  in  mind  the  above  result  for  his 
further  scrutiny. 

III.  Having  thus  given  a  general  organic  out- 
line of  the  poet's  achievement  during  this  Middle 
Period,  of  his  biography,  we  may  next  inquire  about 
the  external  events  of  his  practical  life,  which  must 


452  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

also  have  had  an  influence  upon  his  literary  work, 
and  have  helped  furnish  its  content.  On  the  whole 
the  best  way  to  get  a  structural  survey  over  these 
nine  years  of  his  outer  activities,  is  to  divide  them 
according  to  the  localities  where  they  take  place: 
Stratford  and  London.  Now  several  biographers 
have  observed  that  Shakespeare  during  this  Tragic 
Period  seamed  to  hover  between  his  country-home 
and  his  city-work;  and  it  is  most  natural  to  sup- 
pose that  he  would  spend  his  vacation  in  rural 
quiet,  then  during  the  busy  season  he  would  be 
found  immersed  in  his  theatrical  duties.  Accord- 
ingly we  may  here  assume,  for  the  matter  has  no 
rigid  documentary  proof,  that  the  poet,  being  now 
a  wealthy  man,  found  it  greatlj^  to  his  comfort  as 
well  as  of  advantage  to  his  literary  labors,  that  he 
make  his  yearly  retreat  to  the  calm  of  Stratford 
after  the  strenuosity  of  London.  'And  that  was 
and  still  is  the  general  custom  of  the  English  land- 
owning gentry,  among  whom  Shakespeare  was  now 
enrolled. 

We  have  already  observed  in  the  previous  Epoch 
that  he  had  become  a  well -conditioned  successful 
man  in  his  poetic  work,  in  his  stage-art,  and  in  his 
finances.  Seemingly  as  soon  as  he  was  fully  able," 
he  returned  to  Stratford,  his  ever-loved  birth-town, 
and  still  the  home  of  his  mother  and  father,  of  his 
wife  and  children,  of  his  relatives  and  friends. 
We  may  recall  that  in  1597,  he  purchased  the 
prominent  Stratford  residence  known  under  the 
name  of  New  Place,  as  a  kind  of  palatial  center  for 


TRE    MASTEB'S    TBAGEDIES  453 

his  family  and  people,  whereupon  he  also  obtained 
from  the  herald's  office  a  title  of  gentility.  In 
these  acts  we  can  see  that  he  was  taking  up  and 
embodying  in  himself  the  transmitted  customs  and 
institutions  of  his  native  land;  he  was  realizing 
himself  as  a  complete  institutional  man  after  the 
English  model.  Undoubtedly  in  such  a  bent  one 
has  to  recognize  an  ingrained  aristocratic  element, 
which  the  world  must  accept  in  Shakespeare  as 
personally  temperamental  and  as  also  deeply  na- 
tional ;  indeed  what  would  England  herself  be  and 
her  history  without  her  aristocracy?  Therefore 
Shakespeare  at  Stratford  during  this  time  was  the 
conformist,  the  traditionalist,  building  up  his  inner 
life  as  well  as  his  environment  in  harmony  with 
his  people's  age-hallowed  prescription.  Very  dif- 
ferent had  been  his  defiant  youth  in  the  company 
of  Marlowe  and  his  imprescriptible  fellow-poets. 

But  behold,  when  he  turns  back  to  roaring  Lon- 
don from  his  placid  country-side — what  a  metamor- 
phosis within  and  without !  He  seems  to  revert 
with  new  and  mightier  intensity  to  his  Marlowese 
Titanism.  For  just  look  into  those  Tragedies  which 
he  is  composing  and  putting  on  his  stage;  the 
deepest,  bloodiest  soul-riving  conflicts  of  the  strong 
man  in  and  with  his  institutional  world  the  poet 
dares  here  to  give  and  to  live — quite  the  reversal  of 
that  tranquil  life  at  Stratford  so  concordant  with 
the  established  social  order.  Verily  it  is  another 
world  or  rather  the  other  side  of  the  same  world; 
also  another  man  is  this  Shakespeare  now,  or  better, 


454  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA, 

the  other  side  of  the  same  man,  whose  deepest 
doubleness  it  is  our  present  duty  to  fathom  and  to 
synthesize.  Somehow  thus  for  a  start  we  may  con- 
ceive the  Stratford  Shakespeare  and  the  London 
Shakespeare. 

First  of  all  we  would  gladly  catch  some  glimpse 
of  his  private  dwelling-place,  and  even  of  his  work- 
shop in  the  city.  Let  the  fact  be  put  in  its  full 
contrast :  from  his  lordly  spacious  mansion  of  New 
Place  with  its  aristocratic  pretension  he  shrinks 
back  or  perchance  slinks  back  for  his  abode  into  a 
little  room  of  a  very  modest  lodging-house.  He 
becomes  a  tenant  of  the  humble  tradesman,  Chris- 
topher Mount  joy,  public  hair-dresser  and  maker  of 
wigs,  needful  especially  for  theatrical  people. 
This  most  interesting  and  telling  fact,  for  it  reveals 
much  about  Shakespeare's  way  of  living  as  well  as 
of  his  private  occupations,  has  been  recently  dug 
up  from  that  cemetery  of  long  buried  lawsuits  and 
other  ancient  troubles  known  as  the  Public  Record 
Office  of  London.  Almost  as  surprising  is  this 
other  circumstance  that  the  excavator  was  an  Amer- 
ican Professor  from  far-away  Nebraska  University, 
Charles  William  Wallace,  who  reports  examining 
several  millions  of  old  manuscripts,  entombed 
there  for  some  three  hundred  years,  from  which 
mountains  of  moldy  written  chaff  he  has  sifted  out 
these  fresh  golden  grains  of  knowledge  for  the  new 
Shakespearian  biography. 

This  house  of  Mount  joy's  stood  ''at  the  corner 
of  Silver  Street  and  Mugwell  or  Muggle  Street  in 


THE    MASTEB'S    TBAGEDIES  455 

Cripplegate  ward" — Rabelais  himself  could  not 
surpass  this  assortment  of  grotesque  but  genuine 
names.  Moreover  we  are  told  that  it  was  ''an  an- 
cient and  most  respectable  neighborhood",  where 
dwelt  many  of  Shakespeare's  fellow-players  and 
playwrights,  mostly  moneyless  as  usual,  and  evi- 
dently lodging  like  him  in  hired  rooms,  which  are 
generally  tenanted  by  the  floating  population  of  a 
great  city.  Thus  did  the  wide-branching  landed 
Stratford  aristocrat  shrivel  and  minimize  himself 
into  plebeian  rookery  quarters  when  he  touched 
liondon.  But  why?  Evidently  he,  disesteemed  as 
an  actor  and  probably  also  decried  as  an  upstart, 
could  not  obtain  social  recognition  in  the  capital 
from  the  nation's  high-born  class  of  titled  nobility. 
Then  a  more  compelling  reason  would  be,  that  he 
needed  quiet,  solitude,  self-communion  in  order  to 
express  himself  fully  in  the  great  works  which  he 
was  meditating  and  writing  at  this  Period. 

Moreover  during  his  stay  with  the  Mount  joys, 
which  must  have  been  jjrolonged,  it  is  of  dated  rec- 
ord that  in  1609  William  Shakespeare  played  a 
peculiar  quite  dramatic  role  in  a  real  love-affair 
which  involved  the  wig-maker's  family.  He  was 
solicited  by  Madam  Mountjoy  to  act  as  a  go-be- 
tween or  marriage-broker  for  the  purpose  of  bring- 
ing into  wedlock  the  household's  daughter  and 
a  promising  apprentice  in  her  father's  shop.  The 
chief  lure  for  the  match  seems  to  have  been  the 
young  lady 's  dower  of  fifty  pounds.  This  very  real 
part  our   Shakespeare   performed   with   complete 


456  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

success,  evidently  making  happy  both  the  lovers 
and  the  parents.  But  the  course  of  true  love  never 
did  run  smooth  in  actual  life  or  in  a  Shakespearian 
comedy.  After  a  time  trouble  arose  over  the  dower, 
the  husband  complaining  that  he  had  the  girl  but 
not  the  stipulated  money.  The  result  was  a  law- 
suit in  the  year  1612,  whose  proceedings  are  still 
preserved  in  the  Court's  record,  which  gives  the 
evidence  of  Shakespeare  as  witness  in  the  case 
thus  suddenly  resurrected  by  Professor  Wallace 
from  long  dead  oblivion  to  new  shining  immortal- 
ity. But  has  not  the  circumstance  a  right  comic 
tinge?  Here  the  poet  is  discovered  acting  in  life 
a  part  which  recalls  some  of  his  dramatic  charac- 
ters, for  instance  Dame  Quickly  and  Pandar;  and 
he  seems  to  have  been  chief  maker  of  a  real  comedy 
whose  personages  were  the  members  of  the  family 
with  which  he  was  a  lodger.  Well  may  he  and  we 
with  him  exclaim:     All  the  world's  a  stage. 

Another  co-incidence  must  be  brought  to  mind: 
during  this  same  time,  Shakespeare  was  at  the 
height  of  his  Tragic  Period  whose  central  year  may 
well  be  dated  1604-5,  as  it  lies  just  in  the  middle 
between  1600  and  1609,  the  extreme  years  of  this 
Period.  One  remembers  that  the  Second  Quarto 
of  Hamlet  was  printed  in  1604,  probably  with 
Shakespeare's  own  consent,  or  even  with  his  per- 
sonal revision.  Then  it  has  long  been  observed 
that  three  of  the  poet's  greatest  Tragedies  have  a 
tendency  to  hover  about  this  same  date  (1604-5), 
namely — Macbeth,  King  Lear,  and  Othello — as  far 


TRE    MASTER'S     TBAGEDIES  457 

as  the  chronological  proof  of  their  origin  can  at 
present  be  made  out.  Shakespeare  was  then  forty 
years  old,  at  the  middle-aged  acme  of  his  mightiest 
creative  energy,  which  he  nursed  to  its  supreme 
expression  when  working  alone  perchance  in  his 
modest  room  over  the  wig-shop. 

The  length  of  the  poet 's  stay  with  the  Mount  joys 
cannot  be  directly  obtained  from  the  documents, 
but  it  is  inferred  from  his  written  testimony  that 
his  acquaintance  with  the  family  may  have  reached 
back  to  1598.  At  any  rate  it  is  fairly  presumable 
that  he  roomed  in  their  house  during  the  entire 
nine  years  of  his  Tragic  Period,  and  completed  on 
that  humble  spot  all  his  great  Tragedies,  just  the 
sovereign  literature  of  all  the  world,  as  many 
good  judges  are  saying  at  present.  Fitting  place 
it  would  seem  to  be  for  the  worthiest  memorial  to 
the  poet's  heroic  world-deed,  these  nine  Tragedies, 
done  in  a  little  room  of  wig-maker  Mount  joy's 
house  in  Cripplegate  ward,  at  the  corner  of  Silver 
Street  and  Mugwell  or  Muggle  Street,  London,  as 
the  legend  runs — the  locality  being  only  ''a  five 
minutes'  walk  from  St.  Paul's  Cathedral",  still 
the  city's  monumental  cynosure. 

And  let  not  the  circumstance  be  forgotten,  for 
it  seems  to  be  symbolic  if  not  prophetic,  that  the 
most  democratic  fact  in  the  life  of  William  Shake- 
speare aristocrat,  as  he  is  often  pronounced  and 
denounced  to-day,  was  dug  up  right  in  the  heart  of 
London,  by  a  Professor  from  democratic  America 's 
most  democratic  Far  West,  who  by  some  unique  in- 


458  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE.DBAMA 

stinct  traveled  over  thousands  of  miles  to  the  very- 
habitat  where  the  supreme  Anglo-Saxon  poet  lived 
his  humblest  yet  his  greatest  'days.  Verily,  why 
just  the  American,  the  far-comer,  and  not  an 
Englishman  born  on  or  near  the  spot?  (See  Lon- 
doner Sir  Sidney  Lee's  sardonic  scowl  of  deprecia- 
tion (Life  of  Shakespeare,  new  ed.  p.  27),  and 
watch  him  tuck  away  into  a  brief  foot-note  every 
important  discovery  of  Wallace.  Still  he  is  fair 
enough  to  tell  where  the  full  record  may  be  found.) 

But  the  most  revealing  circumstance  in  the  en- 
vironment of  this  Second  Period  is  the  poet's 
double  domicile,  dualizing  him  both  as  to  his  outer 
life  and  his  inner  soul  into  what  may  be  called  the 
Stratford  gentleman  and  the  London  poet,  or  the 
reconciled  (comic)  Shakespeare  and  the  world- 
defiant  (tragic)  Shakespeare.  He  after  the  intense 
strain  of  composing  and  staging  his  Tragedy  had 
to  flee  from  it  to  his  peaceful  rural  home ;  but  with 
time's  recuperation  and  domestic  solace,  he  would 
feel  the  renewed  urge,  seemingly  irresistible,  to  re- 
turn to  the  city  where  he  again  could  give  vent  to 
the  deepest  present  need  of  his  spirit,  namely  his 
tragic  self-expression. 

IV.  This  fact  necessarily  calls  up  the  dark  se- 
cret of  Shakespeare's  long  and  intense  tragic  crisis 
which  we  always  come  upon  when  we  look  more 
searchingly  into  the  present  Period.  Whence  came 
and  what  means  this  awful  downpour  of  suffering 
for  nine  years — one  Tragedy  experienced  and  ex- 
pressed after  another,  blow  upon  blow,  till  the  time 


THE    MASTEB'S    TRAGEDIES  459 

of  his  trial,  or  perchance  expiation,  was  over  ?  The 
result,  however,  is  before  us :  the  Tragedy  of  Trag- 
edies set  down  in  writ,  one  vast  human  Tragedy, 
that  of  Man  himself,  truly  the  tragic  side  or  phase 
of  Humanity,  which  the  poet  himself  has  passed 
through  and  told  us  of,  in  a  kind  of  vicarious  serv- 
ice for  us  as  well  as  of  final  release  and  recovery 
for  himself.  We  may  here  hint  in  advance  that  the 
poet  survives  his  own  tragic  ordeal,  and  then  enters 
upon  a  new  and  higher  stage  of  his  spirit's  evolu- 
tion— the  coming  Third  Period  of  his  Life-drama. 

Shakespeare  had  already  attained  worldly  suc- 
cess, he  had  won  money,  fame,  influence,  even  rank 
— the  externals  of  fortune  were  his  by  1600.  Thus 
his  economic,  utilitarian,  purely  personal  motives 
for  drama-making  were  fairly  satisfied.  He  col- 
lected rents  from  his  real  estate ;  he  had  a  good  in- 
come from  his  profession,  being  dramatic  author, 
actor,  manager  and  shareholder  in  his  theatrical 
enterprises;  he  must  also  have  gotten  some  returns 
from  his  literary  property,  since  his  early  poems, 
especially  Venus  and  Adonis,  continued  to  sell  edi- 
tion after  edition.  Recent  estimates  sum  up  Shake- 
speare's  income  at  this  time  to  have  been  a  thousand 
pounds  a  year,  which  would  be  equivalent  to  some 
twenty  or  possibly  twenty-five  thousand  dollars  of 
cur  present  American  money,  if  we  take  into  ac- 
count the  diminished  purchasing  power  of  our 
metallic  standard,  since  gold  now  buys  hardly  a 
fourth  or  a  fifth  of  what  it  did  in  Shakespeare's 
day. 


460  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

Moreover  the  poet  might  have  gone  on  producing 
his  lighter  plays,  such  as  Twelfth  Night  and  As 
You  Like  It,  indefinitely  unless  something  had 
stopped  him.  Such  happy-ending  and  happy-mak- 
ing dramas  were  very  popular  and  very  remunera- 
tive, quite  satisfactory  as  far  as  cash-box  and  repu- 
tation might  be  the  poet 's  objects.  But  evidently  a 
deeper  necessity  has  taken  hold  of  him,  a  mightier 
motive  than  any  external  reward  has  clutched  his 
creative  power  and  insists  upon  compelling  it  to 
utterance.  Though  he  already  be  famed  as  the  sur- 
passing and  most  versatile  i)oet  of  his  time,  having 
written  some  twenty-two  dramas  besides  other  kinds 
of  poetry,  he  has  not  yet  opened  into  the  expression 
of  his  larger  and  deeper  self;  indeed  he  has  just 
reached  down  to  this  in  his  evolution,  and  feels  the 
irresistible  urge  to  hoist  it  out  of  its  dark  formless 
depths  into  the  formful  light-bearing  word. 

And  now  we  shall  try  to  fathom  some  of  the 
causes,  if  not  the  one  ultimate  all-coercive  cause, 
which  gave  this  tragic  turn  to  the  poet's  Life- 
drama.  On  the  whole  it  seems  best  to  group  these 
diversely  compelling  forces,  working  upon  and  in 
the  man,  under  three  heads  which  start  from  the 
first  and  outermost  and  then  penetrate  to  the  inner 
most  and  ultimate. 

(1)  What  may  be  called  Shakespeare's  outer 
surrounding  world,  especially  in  its  political  aspect, 
was  turning  gloomy  and  threatening.  All  England 
looked  forward  with  no  small  anxiety  to  the  coming 
succession  of  the  crown,  as  Elizabeth's  demise  ap- 


TEE    MASTEB'S     TRAGEDIES  461 

proached.  James  of  Scotland,  son  of  its  truly 
tragic  Queen,  the  executed  Mary,  was  the  rightful 
heir,  but  his  character  inspired  deep  solicitude  and 
even  opposition.  Was  there  brewing  another  long 
dynastic  strife  like  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  those 
wars  which  young  Shakespeare  had  helped  put  into 
bloody  dramas,  which  were  still  demanded  by 
I)eople  as  mirroring  their  possible  coming  conflict? 
Evidently  the  x)oet,  now  of  middle  life,  must  have^ 
tingled  with  the  i)resent  new  significance  given  to 
his  earliest  work.  Then  the  Queen,  Elizabeth,  be- 
ing very  old,  morbid,  lonely,  getting  more  and 
more  arbitrary  like  aged  Lear,  and  even  more  cruel 
through  an  ever-growing  suspicion  of  those  nearest 
to  her,  became  a  sort  of  tragic  Nemesis  enacted  be- 
fore the  whole  land. 

Against  the  Queen  and  her  domination,  some  of 
the  noblest  spirits  of  the  realm  had  not  only  pro- 
tested but  were  ready  to  resort  to  arms.  Then 
came  the  rebellion  in  which  Essex  being  taken 
prisoner,  was  beheaded,  and  Southampton,  the 
poet's  special  admirer  and  patron,  was  thrown 
into  the  Tower,  with  death  hanging  over  his  head 
till  King  James  set  him  free.  How  deeply  must 
sympathetic  Shakespeare  have  felt  at  that  long 
spectacle  of  his  noble  friend's  ever-menacing  trag- 
edy! It  was  enough  to  tinge  his  soul  with  a  like 
fate.  Already  we  have  noted  that  the  poet,  as  he 
wrote  the  Lancastrian  Trilogy,  must  have  observed 
the  germ  of  the  growing  insurrection  in  his  high- 
born friends,  and  have  signaled  them  a  dramatic 


462  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

warning  from  his  play  of  Henry  V,  who  executes 
remorselessly  three  aristocratic  rebels.  And  even 
the  career  and  end  of  Hotspur  may  have  contained 
an  admonition  for  the  dashing  defiant  high-born 
Southampton. 

It  is  probable,  though  not  certain,  that  Shake- 
speare's theatre  and  even  himself  as  actor  became 
entangled  in  this  rebellion  by  playing  the  deposition 
of  Richard  II  in  the  streets  of  London  during 
1600-1  at  the  request  of  Essex  and  his  supporters, 
in  order  to  stir  up  the  people  to  revolt  against  the 
Queen,  She  is  reported  to  have  brooded  with  a 
deep  suspicion  and  horror  over  the  play  as  intimat- 
ing and  perchance  foreshowing  her  dethronement 
and  death.  In  her  excitement,  doubtless,  she  once 
exclaimed  that  it  had  been  acted  forty  times  in 
open  streets  and  houses  for  the  Essex  uprising, 
which,  however,  soon  collapsed,  being  without  any 
popular  support.  And  Shakespeare's  play  of 
Richard  II  still  shows  the  wound  of  this  troubled 
time,  since  the  early  Quartos  of  it  were  slashed 
vengeful ly,  being  amputated  of  one  hundred  and 
sixty-four  lines  by  the  censor,  who  cut  out  the 
scene  of  the  Monarch's  deposition  and  submission. 

Moreover,  it  would  seem  that  the  Globe  Theater 
new-built  about  this  time  (1599-1600)  and  the 
scene  of  Shakespeare's  chief  London  investment,  as 
well  as  of  his  special  vocation  and  of  his  supreme 
poetic  self-expression,  was  threatened  for  years 
with  injury  if  not  with  destruction  through  hostile 
litigation.    This  Theatre  started  out  with  a  stormy 


THE    MASTEB'S    TRAGEDIES  463 

violent  birth  which,  we  may  think,  fated  it  from 
the  start.  Professor  Wallace  is  of  the  opinion  that 
these  ever  recurring  business  difficulties  and  hate- 
ful lawsuits  have  left  their  dark  tinct  upon  Shake- 
speare's  Tragedies  of  this  Period,  causing  '^the 
changed  tone  of  the  dramatic  products"  of  the  poet, 
who  now  as  the  Globe's  Theatre's  own  voice  ^* re- 
corded the  common  tragic  sense"  lurking  in  all  its 
actors  and  owners.  The  Professor  also  notes  the 
great  change  in  the  mood  of  Shakespeare :  ' '  prior  to 
the  Globe  enterprise  his  plays  had  been  on  the  sun- 
nier side"  which  seemed  to  close  with  Henry  V. 
(Wallace,  Nebraska  University  Studies  Vol.  13,  p. 
32-3).  So  the  poet's  own  new  theatrical  edifice  em- 
bosomed within  itself  a  kind  of  tragic  destiny,  be- 
ing a  fated  if  not  haunted  house,  whose  very  walls 
seem  to  have  had  for  hiin  a  tragic  insi)iration. 

So  we  conceive  that  to  Shakespeare  there  must 
have  been  a  change  from  the  London  of  the  previ- 
ous Period,  which  on  the  whole  was  comic  and 
reconciled  in  the  mirror  of  his  plays,  especially 
those  written  during  his  Happy  Sexennium.  But 
now  London  itself  becomes  about  1600  transformed 
for  him  and  also  in  itself,  as  it  unrolls  for  a  time 
the  threatening  scene  of  a  great  tragic  catastrophe 
both  national  and  personal.  It  is  probable  that 
from  this  fatefully  overshadowed  city  he  would  flee 
annually  to  his  sunny  country-home  at  Stratford 
for  relief  and  restoration.  Still  when  he  had 
caught  fresh  breath  and  creative  urge  in  his  sylvan 
retreat,  he  would  again  feel  himself  drawn  back  to 


464  SEAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA. 

London  for  a  new  outpour  of  the  ever-fecundating 
tragedy  which  yet  lurked  in  his  life  and  in  his  en- 
vironment, and  demanded  another  corresponding 
utterance. 

(2)  Such  was  the  present  doom-menacing  out- 
look immediately  before  Shakespeare's  eyes;  but 
he  was  also  led  or  driven  back  to  a  past  fated 
world,  that  of  Greco-Roman  antiquity,  which  had 
left  a  noble  account  of  itself  in  various  forms.  Now 
the  form  of  that  old  Mediterranean  record  which 
appealed  most  deeply  and  creatively  to  the  poet 
during  this  Period  he  found  in  Plutarch's  Parallel 
Lives  of  the  famous  Greeks  and  Romans,  as  set 
forth  in  North's  English  translation  of  Amyot's 
French  translation  from  the  original  tongue.  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  Plutarch  became  for 
Shakespeare  in  his  present  tragic  mood  the  Book 
of  Books,  which  he  pored  over  and  assimilated  dur- 
ing the  whole  nine  years.  One  may  conceive  it  to 
have  been  almost  his  soul's  own  breviary  which  he 
daily  perused  and  pondered,  and  from  which  he 
won  not  only  cultural  knowledge  but  also  a  mighty 
productive  impulse  driving  him  to  recreate  a  num- 
ber of  its  tragic  heroes  in  his  own  dramatic  form 
and  speech.  So  let  us  imagine  Shakespeare  read- 
ing, contemplating,  and  re-writing  Plutarch  in  his 
little  quiet  den  at  the  Mountjoy  home,  where  he 
also  kept  his  working  library. 

The  poet  had  already  composed  his  English  His- 
torical plays,  the  materials  for  which  he  in  large 
part  derived  from  Holinshed,  toward  whom  his  at- 


THE    MASTER'S    TBAGEDIE8  465 

titude  was  chiefly  that  of  an  appropriator  of  events 
of  history  with  their  personages.  But  his  relation 
to  Plutarch  grew  to  be  very  different,  far  more  in- 
timate; from  the  old  Greek  biographer  he  took  not 
only  the  needed  incidents,  people,  and  words,  but 
the  spirit,  the  world-view,  which  he  makes  his  own 
for  the  time  being.  It  is  probable  that  Shakespeare 
had  already  dipped  into  Plutarch  back  in  his  youth- 
ful comic  Epoch,  since  he  shows  some  Plutarchian 
traces  in  his  Midsummer  Night's  Dr&am  and  else- 
where. Still  the  modern  poet  was  not  ready  for 
the  ancient  biographer  till  now,  when  their  two 
souls  came  together  and  interfused  in  a  kind  of  mu- 
tual enthral  Iment  and  ecstasy.  Both  dwelt  in  a 
world  of  tragic  heroes,  whose  destinies  they  por- 
trayed each  after  his  own  art-form.  Shakespeare 
was  in  a  Plutarchian  mood,  and  Plutarch,  we  may 
add,  was  in  Shakespearian  mood.  So  they  found 
each  other,  both  being  at  their  deepest  turn  trag- 
ically minded. 

Of  the  nine  Tragedies  three  are  taken  directly 
from  Plutarch,  all  belonging  to  Roman  History, 
whose  grand  personalities  fascinated,  and  for  a  time 
fated  Shakespeare.  In  three  others  Plutarch's  in- 
fluence and  also  his  materials  can  be  traced.  We 
have  already  noted  how  deeply  Shakespeare  was  in 
former  years  determined  by  the  Italian  Renascence, 
which  sprang  from  the  antique  Greco-Roman  cul- 
ture, and  which  he  after  his  manner  assimilated 
and  reproduced  in  his  numerous  comic  plays.  But 
the    Shakespeare    now    Romanizing    in    Tragedies 


466  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

shows  a  much  profounder  and  more  original  and 
compelling  genius  than  the  Shakespeare  once  Ital- 
ianizing in  Comedies.  And  the  more  narrow  Shake- 
speare of  the  English  Histories  rises  from  his  par- 
ticular nation  to  the  universal  Shakespeare  of  the 
World's  History.  Such  is  one  line  of  his  larger 
evolution  into  and  through  his  present  tragic 
Period. 

We  are  to  recall  that  Plutarch  lived  in  a  time 
of  decadence  and  looked  back  upon  two  tragic 
worlds,  the  Greek  and  the  Roman,  with  their  re- 
spective Great  Men  whom  he  compared  and  paral- 
leled, being  mooded  to  pensive  reminiscence  as  if 
such  greatness  had  forever  passed  away.  Hence 
Plutarch,  sculpturing  his  long  gallery  of  classic 
biographies  toward  the  close  of  the  first  century 
A.  D.,  shows  the  pervasive  belief,  like  his  great 
contemporary  the  historian  Tacitus,  that  the  Ro- 
man Empire,  then  embracing  the  civilized  world, 
was  in  a  state  of  decline  deathward.  Such  was 
also  Shakespeare's  mood  at  this  crisis — a  mood 
which  our  own  recent  World- War  brought  home  to 
many  of  us  helplessly  sympathetic  with  all  its 
tragic  intensity. 

Thus  our  poet  for  his  more  universal  self-expres- 
sion turned  back  to  a  corresponding  time  with  his 
own — so  he  felt — to  the  great  past  of  the  World's 
History.  And  he  lived  in  that  antique  writ,  which 
was  most  congenial  with  his  spirit's  condition,  be- 
ing the  work  of  Plutarch  who  from  this  outlook 
may  be  deemed  a  Greco-Roman  Shakespeare  pro- 


TRE    MASTEB^S    TRAGEDIES  467 

jecting  his  double  line  of  herioc  characters,  who 
are  wrestling  desperately  with  their  tragic  destiny. 
Still,  here  let  it  be  whispered  ahead,  that  under- 
neath this  deep  Plutarchian  vein  we  catch  glimpses 
of  a  deeper  strain  of  Shakespeare  unfated  and  rec- 
onciled, which  will  yet  rise  to  the  surface  and  utter 
itself  in  a  new  dramatic  fori 

(3)  But  far  pro  founder,  more  desperate  and 
soul-compelling  than  the  two  fore-mentioned  causes 
for  Shakespeare's  present  tragic  turn,  was  the 
third  cause,  which  must  now  be  set  down  with  due 
emphasis.  There  fell  upon  him  about  this  time 
the  subtlest,  intensest,  most  heart-cleaving  experi- 
ence of  all  his  days,  which  tapped  the  last  sources 
of  his  being  and  made  them  well  up  into  his  might- 
iest volcanic  utterance.  For  there  sweeps  now 
through  his  life's  scene  the  shadowy  figure  of  a 
woman  limned  by  himself  in  overcast  but  very  sug- 
gestive outline  as  The  Dark  Lady.  It  was  she 
who,  irresistibly  fascinating  but  utterly  faithless, 
had  the  demonic  power  of  upturning  and  pervert- 
ing the  very  ground-work  of  his  existence.  Thus 
he  has  a  furious  love-life,  at  least  when  he  stays  in 
London,  which,  though  attuned  with  the  most  ex- 
quisite pain,  rouses  to  its  highest  excellence  his  su- 
preme creative  gift,  and  reveals  what  may  well  be 
called  the  deepest  and  most  eternal  experience  of 
his  entire  career. 

At  the  heart  of  Shakespeare's  productive  per- 
sonality lay  love  ever  active,  with  its  double  power 
as  the  original  fountain  of  all  his  best  and  of  all 


468  SHAKE8PE ABE'S    LIFE-DRAMA. 

his  worst,  of  his  maddest  execrations  as  well  as  of 
his  wildest  ecstasies.  Through  Antonyms  mask  we 
may  hear  the  poet 's  rapture : 

Now  for  the  love  of  Love  and  her  soft  hours ! 
There's  not  a  minute  of  our  lives  should  stretch 
Without  some  pleasure  now. 

Not  only  as  lover  but  as  the  lover  of  Love  does  he 
touch  his  topmost  bliss.  On  the  other  hand  falls 
the  harsh  count erstroke  in  his  confession:  ''Love 
is  my  sin",  though  it  had  been  not  only  his  joy, 
but  his  grand  means  of  reconciliation  in  the  preced- 
ing Epoch,  his  Happy  Sexennium.  Hearken  now 
to  his  desperate  estate  (Sonnet  147)  : 

My  love  is  as  a  fever,  longing  still 
For  that  which  longer  nurseth  the  disease : 
Feeding  on  that  which  doth  preserve  the  ill, 
Th'  uncertain-sickly  appetite  to  please. 

He  even  proclaims  his  own  mortal  undoing:  "De- 
sire is  death",  so  consumingly  tragic  blazes  up  his 
passion.     Then  his  despairful  outlook : 

Past  cure  I  am,  now  reason  is  past  care — 
And  frantic-mad  with  evermore  unrest ; 
My  thoughts  and  my  discourse  as  madmen 's  are 
At  random  from  the  truth  vainly  expressed. 
For  I  have  sworn  thee  fair  and  thought  thee 

bright. 
Who  are  as  black  as  hell,  and  dark  as  night. 

Such  is  his  darkest  picture  of  his  Dark  Lady,  who 
keeps  lulling  him  with  her  vampire  love  while  sap- 


TRE    MASTEB'S    TRAGEDIES  469 

ping  his  very  sanity  and  crazing  his  speech  to  that 
of  a  madman. 

Very  significant  seems  to  us  the  poet^s  confession 
here  that  his  love-fever  brings  upon  him  wild 
paroxysms  of  madness,  which  vents  itself  in  irra- 
tional discourse.  One  has  to  think  of  Shakespeare 's 
line  of  mad  or  mad-seeming  folks  who  range 
through  a  number  of  his  Tragedies,  beginning  with 
Hamlet  and  Ophelia  and  culminating  in  Lear,  with 
crazy  streaks  in  Timon,  Lady  Macbeth,  and  per- 
chance in  others.  But  the  main  point  now  is  to 
note  that  only  in  the  poet's  Tragedies  of  the  pres- 
ent Period  does  he  show  such  a  strong  unique  bent 
toward  the  portraiture  of  the  internally  broken 
mind.  Hitherto  in  the  First  Period  with  its  genial 
diversity  of  Comedies,  Histories,  and  Tragedies, 
there  is  not  a  distinctive  madman,  though  he  has 
clowns  and  fools  even  to  superfluity.  But  the 
deeper  turn  of  his  pen  to  an  incurred  spiritual  dis- 
order now  rises  to  the  front  for  the  first  time  in  his 
Life-drama.  In  fact  a  kind  of  predilection,  or  at 
least  some  mighty  need  of  his  own  soul's  deliver- 
ance drives  him  to  anatomize  and  to  dramatize  the 
deranged  Psyche  of  man  and  woman.  Why  such 
a  seeming  idiosyncrasy  of  creation  in  our  greatest 
poet?  Again  we  record  our  belief  that  the  neces- 
sity lay  co-ercively  within  his  own  heart's  experi- 
ence to  invoke  his  shattered  spirit's  ultimate  rem- 
edy, namely  self-expression  in  his  art.  Such  was 
his  way  to  ' '  cleanse  the  stuffed  bosom  of  that  peril- 
ous stuff  which  weighs  upon  the  heart ' ',  projecting 


470  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

his  deepest  psychic  alienation  out  of  himself  into 
writ  and  thus  getting  rid  of  it,  at  least  for  a  respite. 
If  we  dare  take  him  on  his  word,  he  knew  how  to 
save  himself  from  insanity  through  the  healing 
power  of  his  own  literary  utterance.  So  we  may 
prophesy  that  he  will  at  the  grand  goal  overcome 
this  most  insidious  yet  enraptured  of  life's  illu- 
sions— the  sensuous  lure  of  the  Dark  Lady,  more 
commonly  painted  as  the  Scarlet  Woman. 

Here,  then,  would  seem  to  be  the  central,  genetic 
source  of  Shakespeare's  deepest-fermenting  change 
from  his  previous  happy  reconciled  nature  to  his 
present  tragic  all-dooming  temper.  One  thinks  that 
he  often  alludes  to  this  change  of  himself  in  what 
may  be  taken  as  the  opening  play  of  this  Tragic 
Period — Hamlet.  The  Queen-mother  wonders  at 
*'our  too-much  changed  son",  and  the  King  asks 
anxiously:  ''How  is  it  that  the  clouds  still  hang 
on  you?"  And  Hamlet  directly  declares:  "I 
have  that  within  which  passeth  show",  that  which 
cannot  be  given  in  any  outward  seeming  like  an 
acted  part  or  a  drama.  Moreover,  he  throughout 
the  play  appears  to  be  tampering  with  the  problems 
of  insanity,  having  become  much  interested  in  it 
and  testing  it  with  varied  experiments  on  himself. 
So  the  whole  Court  is  set  agog  by  the  odd  unwonted 
doings  of  the  young  Prince. 

Moreover  Hamlet  himself  in  the  most  exalted 
prose  passage  of  the  drama  describes  his  change, 
outer  and  inner,  from  his  previous  Happy  Sex- 
ennium:     ''I  have  of  late — but  wherefore  I  know 


TEE    MASTEB'S    TBAGEDIES  471 

not — lost  all  my  mirth,  forgone  all  custom  of  exer- 
cises", a  very  personal  touch  which  hints  him 
brooding  gloomily  in  his  room.  ''Indeed  it  goes  so 
heavily  with  my  disposition  that  this  goodly  frame, 
the  earth,  seems  to  me  a  sterile  promonitory. 
.  .  .  .  What  a  piece  of  work  is  man !  .  .  .  . 
And  yet  to  me  what  is  this  quintessence  of  diist? 
Man  delights  not  me;  no,  nor  woman  neither" — 
which  latter  note  indicates  his  deepest  difference 
from  his  former  time  of  felicity.  The  love  of 
woman,  once  the  fountain  of  his  sweetest  creation, 
has  turned  to  the  bitterest  curse.  Almost  at  the 
start  of  the  play  we  hear  him  exclaim  this  curse  to 
himself:  ''Frailty,  thy  name  is  woman!"  And 
then  soon  after  he,  the  misanthrope,  literally 
crushes  the  heart  and  also  the  brain  of  his  lady- 
love, Ophelia,  with  his  sledge-hammer  words :  ' '  Get 
thee  to  a  nunnery ;  why  wouldst  thou  be  a  breeder 
of  sinners?"  The  race  deserves  suicide,  and  he 
does  not  except  himself :  "it  were  better  my  mother 
had  not  borne  me. ' '  With  this  sentence  we  catch  a 
glimpse  into  the  last  depths  of  the  poet's  tragic 
wretchedness :  he  appears  estranged  not  only  from 
himself  as  individual  and  from  his  institutional 
world,  but  also  from  Man  as  born  of  Woman,  from 
the  Genus  Homo  itself  whose  reproduction  should 
be  halted  at  once  on  the  planet.  To  such  an  all- 
devouring  monster  has  ruined  love  overmade  him 
from  his  once  joyous  productive  energy,  in  which 
we  beheld  him  not  very  long  since  luxuriating  with 
so  much  productive  ecstasy  during  his  Happy  Sex- 


472  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

ennium.  Here  we  touch  the  first  cause,  the  orig- 
inal germ  of  the  poet's  most  intimate  psychical 
transformation:  he,  the  mightiest  lover  of  Love  as 
the  very  home  of  his  creative  heart,  has  fallen  out 
with  Love  itself,  converting  it  into  the  World's 
tragic  Pandemonium. 

V.  This  brings  us  to  emphasize  the  most  strik- 
ing, indeed  the  altogether  stunning  change  in  these 
nine  dramas:  it  is  Shakespeare's  totally  altered 
view  of  the  female  personality  and  its  function  in 
the  universal  order,  when  compared  to  what  he  has 
exalted  it  to  be  in  his  previous  plays.  Just  put 
side  by  side  the  two  opposite  sets  of  women :  first 
take  Portia,  Rosalind,  Helena,  and  their  like  of  the 
Comedies;  then  Goneril,  Lady  Macbeth,  Cressida 
and  their  like  of  the  Tragedies.  What  an  awful 
abysmal  contrast!  Verily  the  Shakespearian 
woman  has  changed  from  the  loving  begetter  and 
rescuer  of  love,  to  its  subtle  or  ferocious  destroyer ; 
she  now  seems  ready  to  tear  to  pieces  her  institu- 
tion, the  Family,  showing  herself  totally  unable 
and. unwilling  to  heal  its  conflicts,  which  remedial 
power  was  her  special  gift,  as  once  glorified  by  the 
poet.  Often  she  turns  to  the  insidious  Fury  undo- 
ing her  very  essence  as  mother,  wife,  sweetheart ;  or 
even  when  innocent,  like  Desdemona,  she  is  shown 
the  unconcious  instrument  of  her  own  tragic  fate, 
which  also  entangles  others  with  her  death. 

This  altered  attitude  of  the  poet  in  his  treatment 
of  woman  is  the  supreme  surprise  which  staggers 
the  reader  of  these  Tragedies  when  he  takes  them 


TEE    MASTER'S     TRAGEDIES  473 

up  in  their  biographic  succession.  He  necessarily 
interrogates  their  oracle:  What  desperate  life-en- 
venoming experience  underlies  such  a  complete  spir- 
itual reversal  of  the  poet 's  whole  nature  ?  It  is  not 
simply  a  stoppage,  or  a  renunciation;  Shakespeare 
is  still  the  intense  lover,  yea  the  lover  of  woman's 
love,  but  this  love  of  hers  is  for  him  and  for  his 
genius  no  longer  positive  and  constructive,  but  neg- 
ative and  destructive.  Still  he  clings  to  it,  and 
mightily  wrestles  with  it,  and  portrays  it  as  the 
inner  dominant  energy  of  this  Second  Period  of  his 
writ  and  of  his  life's  evolution. 

Thus  the  Shakespearian  woman,  losing  that  love- 
born,  reconciling,  mediatorial  power  of  hers  be- 
comes tragic,  carrying  along  with  her  into  her  hap- 
less lot  the  man,  whom  she  not  only  fails  to  inspire 
and  redeem,  but  lures  and  taints  with  her  own 
spirit 's  poison.  Again  we  have  to  think  of  the  Dark 
Lady  in  this  connection  thralling  to  her  Satanic 
fascination  the  love-shent  poet,  who  well  recognizes 
the  deadly  charm,  but  cannot  shake  it  off.  In 
more  than  one  Sonnet  we  may  hear  him  rattle  his 
chains  madly  but  in  vain;  take  for  instance  No. 
150: 

Oh  from  what  power  hast  thou  this  powerful 

might, 
With  insufficiency  my  heart  to  sway? 
To  make  me  give  the  lie  to  my  true  sight, 
And  swear  that  brightness  does  not  grace  the 

day? 


474  SHAKESP:E ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

Whence  hast  thou  this  becoming  of  all  things  ill, 
That  in  the  very  refuse  of  thy  deeds 
There  is  such  strength  and  warrantise  of  skill 
That  in  my  mind  thy  worst  all  best  exceeds? 
Who  taught  thee  how  to  make  me  love  thee  more, 
The  more  I  hear  and  see  just  cause  of  hate? 

With  such  piercing  interrogations  he  seeks  to  pene- 
trate this  new  mystery  of  his  love-life,  which  is 
pulverizing  his  very  soul  in  the  crash  of  its  con- 
tradictory emotions. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  Shakespeare  had 
up  to  his  present  period  seen  three  great  historic 
Queens  as  dominant  figures  in  the  near  nations  of 
Western  Europe.  The  sovereignty  of  woman  he 
had  witnessed  in  fuller  reality  than  it  has  ever  been 
manifested  before  or  since.  How  Elizabeth  affected 
him  at  this  time  has  been  already  indicated.  Cath- 
erine de  Medicis  (died  in  1589)  had  shown  herself 
a  kind  of  Fury  in  the  contemporary  religious  wars 
of  France,  having  taken  her  part  in  the  massacre  of 
St.  Bartholomew  which  occurred  during  the  boy- 
hood of  the  poet.  Then  the  career  of  passion-fated 
Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  with  its  tragic  end  in  1587 
must  have  impressed  his  imagination  profoundly, 
as  it  has  stimulated  poetic  natures  to  its  dramatic 
re-creation  till  to-day.  All  these  cotemx^orary 
strong-willed  Queens,  three  of  them,  had  in  them  a 
demonic  strain  of  feminine  charm  which  must  have 
gripped  Shakespeare  the  more  intensely  through  his 
personal  experience  with  a  similar  woman,  who 


THE    MASTEB'S    TRAGEDIES  475 

also  tyrannized  wantonly  over  his  helpless  love,  as 
he  has  repeatedly  bewailed  in  his  Sonnets. 

Woman,  then,  sovereign  woman,  is  the  man- 
scourging  lost  soul  in  these  Tragedies.  She  be^ 
comes  the  original  temptress  who  lures  her  Adam 
to  his  new  transgression,  which  again  means  expul- 
sion of  both  from  happy  innocent  Paradise.  Still 
it  is  but  right  to  let  the  reader  peep  through  the 
rifted  storm-clouds  toward  the  goal  of  this  tragic 
Inferno,  which  opens  doubtfully  with  Hamlet's 
mother  Gertrude  of  Denmark,  yet  gives  us  fresh 
hope  at  its  close  in  Volumnia  of  Rome,  mother  of 
Coriolanus.  And  more  significantly  Shakespeare 
starts  his  tragic  despair  by  sending  Ophelia  to  a 
nunnery,  but  after  some  eight  or  ten  years  he 
takes  the  nun  out  of  cloistered  life  and  graces  her 
for  marriage  in  the  person  of  Isabella. 

VI.  The  First  Folio  lists  these  nine  plays  under 
the  head  of  Tragedies,  which  arrangement,  as  we 
conceive,  derives  from  Shakespeare  himself.  Still 
three  important  changes  have  been  found  neces- 
sary. Titus  Andronicus  and  also  Romeo  and  Juliet 
stand  in  the  Folio's  list,  but  from  the  biographic 
viewpoint  these  two  dramas  are  to  be  set  down  as 
youthful  efforts  and  hence  should  be  placed  early 
in  his  First  Period.  Cymheline  is  ranged  among 
the  Tragedies  by  the  Folio;  but  the  play,  in  spite 
of  certain  tragic  elements,  is  essentially  a  drama  of 
redemptive  mediation,  and  so  should  be  assigned  to 
the  Third  Period.  Troilus  and  Cressida  causes  the 
hardest  puzzle  as  to  its  position.    The  Folio  omits 


476  SHAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

it  altogether  from  the  Table  of  Contents,  or  the  pre- 
fixed ''Catalogue"  of  plays,  but  prints  it  among 
the  Tragedies  and  designates  it  specially  as  a 
•Tragedy. 

So  we  keep  bringing  up  and  holding  before  us 
the  mighty  Nine  of  Shakespeare  and  of  all  Litera- 
ture. We  have  to  think  that  the  dramatist,  while 
writing  them,  was  as  tragic  as  any  of  his  charac- 
ters, or  as  the  whole  of  them  together.  Not  only 
Hamlet  but  Shakespeare  himself  was  meditating 
suicide  when  he  wrote  the  famous  soliloquy,  which 
indeed  is  the  culmination  of  a  preceding  line  of 
man-destroying  thoughts  like  "Get  thee  to  a  nun- 
nery"! There  is  a  sonnet  (No.  66)  which  seems  in- 
serted in  his  poetical  diary  as  the  personal  counter- 
part of  Hamlet's  "to  be  or  not  to  be",  though  the 
heartache  of  it  is  even  stronger  and  fuller  than 
that  of  the  pensive  soliloquy: 

Tired  with  all  these,  for  restful  death  I  cry — 
As,  to  behold  desert  a  beggar  born. 
And  needy  nothing  trimm  'd  in  jollity, 
And  purest  faith  unhappily  foresworn, 
And  gilded  honor  shamefully  misplaced, 
And  maiden  virtue  rudely  strumpeted, 
And  right  perfection  wrongfully  disgraced, 
And  strength  by  limping  sway  disabled, 
And  art  made  tongue-tied  by  authority. 
And  folly  doctor-like  controlling  skill, 
And  simple  truth  miscalled  simplicity. 
And  captive  good  attending  captain  ill. — 


TEE    MASTEB'S    TB  AGE  DIES  477 

Eleven  reasons  he  here  sums  up  for  quitting  this 
tragic  earth-ball,  and  yet  he  stays  for  one  all-over- 
powering reason — love — which  he  cannot  ''leave 
alone"  behind  him,  as  it  were  deserted: 

Tired  with  all  these,  from  these  I  would 

be  gone, 
Save  that,  to  die,  I  leave  my  love  alone. 

Seemingly  Shakespeare  had  felt,  at  least  in  his 
present  mood,  these  ''whips  and  scorns  of  time"  as 
specially  directed  at  himself.  Did  he  not  in  his 
own  case  "behold  desert  a  beggar  born",  and  like- 
wise his  "art  made  tongue-tied  by  authority"  in 
the  recent  royal  interference  with  his  Eichard  II, 
"and  folly  doctor-like  controlling  skill"  through 
the  censorship?  And  so  we  may  well  hear  in  Ham- 
let's soliloquy  a  parallel  and  perhaps  cotempora* 
neous  lament  glooming  over 

The  oppressor's  wrong,  the  proud  man's  con- 
tumely, 
The  insolence  of  office,  and  the  spurns 
That  patient  merit  of  the  unworthy  takes. 

And  let  the  keen-sighted  reader  fail  not  to  remark 
that  such  complaints  scarcely  befit  a  prince  of  the 
blood  like  Hamlet,  whose  station  would  not  nat- 
urally bring  him  into  rasping  contact  with  "the 
insolence  of  office"  and  such  like  troubles.  Now 
Shakespeare  the  actor  must  in  his  vocation  have 
endured  all  these  ills  of  authority,  but  hardly  the 
king's  son  Hamlet.    Thus  the  sonnet  and  the  drama 


478  SHAKESPEABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA. 

strike  the  one  fundamental  key-note  thrilled  out 
of  the  life-experience  of  the  poet. 

From  these  instances  along  with  many  others,  we 
are  to  win  the  ultimate  conclusion:  Shakespeare 
at  his  best  uses  his  dramatic  mask  for  his  own 
deepest  self-expression.  If  we  are  in  right  tune 
with  his  heart-strings,  we  may  overhear  him  pre- 
luding something  of  the  kind  in  one  of  his  sonnets 
(No.  74) ; 

My  life  hath  in  this  line  some  interest, 
Which  for  memorial  still  with  thee  shall  stay; 
When  thou  reviewest  this,  thou  dost  review 
The  very  part  was  consecrate  to  thee ; 
The  earth  can  have  but  earth,  which  is  his  due — 
My  spirit  is  thine,  the  better  part  of  me ; 
So  then  thou  hast  but  lost  the  dregs  of  life, 
The  prey  of  worms,  my  body  being  dead — . 

Whoever  or  whatever  this  deeply  shaded  thou  may 
be — the  point  is  much  disputed  and  can  be  turned 
to  several  meanings — one  thing  is  here  clearly  em- 
phasized: "this  line"  of  mine  is  my  memorial, 
consecrate,  eternal,  revealing  ''my  spirit,  the  better 
part  of  me",  namely  my  immortal  portion,  beyond 
the  death-dealing  blow  of  Tragedy.  So  through 
his  ''line"  he  liberates  himself  from  fate,  even 
when  his  body  has  become  ' '  the  prey  of  worms ' '. 

Thus  Shakespeare,  we  may  repeat,  has  found 
the  open  secret  of  his  life's  supreme  freedom 
through  self-expression,  through  the  grand  discip- 
line of  writing  his  Tragedies,  which  writ  affords 


THE    MASTER'S     TRAGEDIES  479 

him  not  only  the  day's  immediate  relief  but  the 
spirit 's  final  reconciliation  and  redemption.  He  has 
discovered  that  through  his  pen-point  runs  an  ulti- 
mate inner  self-evolution,  and  hence  he  has  to  write 
in  order  to  unfold  out  of  his  present  deeply  negative 
condition.  So  this  pan-tragic  world  of  his,  builded 
of  his  Nine  Tragedies,  which  he  has  to  pass  through 
and  to  transcend  in  rocking  throes  of  passion,  is  a 
kind  of  purgatorial  discipline,  being  at  bottom  rem- 
edial for  his  lacerated,  indeed  demonized  soul.  His 
act  of  self-liberation  is  his  writing,  his  weapon 
against  his  world-gloom  and  perchance  suicide  is 
his  pen,  which  thus  in  his  hands  is  not  only 
mightier  than  the  sword,  but  than  death. 


THIRD  PERIOD. 
The  Tragi-Comedies — Expiation. 

Into  a  new  dramatic  form  as  well  as  into  a  new 
stage  of  his  self-expression  Shakespeare  now  ad- 
vances, having  passed  out  of  his  death-dealing  time, 
and  triumphed  over  the  Titanic  negativity  of  his 
Tragedies.  It  is  a  basic  turn  in  his  life's  total 
psychology,  and  constitutes  the  third  grand  act  of 
his  completed  Pan-drama,  as  it  has  been  played  out- 
wardly and  inwardly  through  his  whole  career. 
Hence  we  caption  it  his  Third  Period,  in  line  with 
his  two  preceding  Periods  which  it  rounds  out  to  a 
finished  achievement.  Here  may  be  again  repeated 
that  if  the  student  aims  to  grasp  the  entire  Shake- 
speare, he  is  definitely  to  outline  and  spiritually  to 
appropriate  these  the  poet's  psychical  Periods. 
For  they  are  the  ordered  means  of  visioning  the  full 
sweep  of  his  realized  personality,  and  thus  of  be- 
coming acquainted  with  the  whole  man  both  in  his 
external  and  internal  fulfilment. 

Moreover,  with  some  protest  at  the  word,  we  have 
named  this  Period  .tragi-comic,  inasmuch  as  it  still 
has  the  note  and  the  conflict  of  Tragedy,  but  of 
(480) 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  481 

Tragedy  overcome,  reconciled,  indeed  expiated. 
That  is,  the  poet  is  no  longer  in  his  drama  man-de- 
stroying, but  man-rescuing ;  his  new  bent  is  to  save 
even  the  tragic  individual  from  fate,  not  to  whelm 
him  into  its  jaws.  Hence  we  employ  the  blended 
vocable  Tragi-comedy,  very  serious  of  meaning, 
even  if  usage  has  tainted  it  with  a  certain  grotesque 
tinge. 

I.  Under  this  rubric  we  set  down  four  dramas 
Df  Shakespeare,  which,  as  their  separate  dates  are 
not  ascertainable,  may  be  arranged  in  the  following 
line  of  succession:  Measure  for  Measure,  Cymhe- 
line,  Winter  *s  Tale,  and  Tempest.  All  these  plays 
have  a  similar  ground-tone  of  religiosity,  if  not  of 
formal  religion;  they  show  a  common  structural 
principle  of  flight  and  return;  they  are  quite  ho- 
mogeneous linguistically  and  metrically ;  their  per- 
vasive spirit  is  mediatorial,  that  of  atonement  and 
restoration  after  lapse,  wrong,  sin. 

Thus  the  whole  may  be  said  to  form  a  Tetralogy 
of  Redemption,  a  kind  of  Passion  Play  of  Suffering 
and  Salvation,  which  saves  the  otherwise  doomed, 
which  unfates  the  hitherto  fated,  which  in  its  very 
course  and  process  makes  Tragedy  untragic.  And 
here  should  be  noted  the  counterstroke :  in  undoing 
this  elemental  tragic  obsession  of  his,  the  poet  him- 
self at  his  mightiest  poetic  overflow  is  undone ;  he 
becomes  becalmed  in  his  genius,  being  toned  down 
into  moderation,  repentance,  reconciliation.  The 
gigantic  Shakespeare  of  the  Second  Period  seems 
now  hamstrung,  no  longer  world-overwhelming  in 


482  SHAEESPEAEE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

his  grandiose  energy,  but  repressive  of  himself  and 
penitential  of  his  own  greatness. 

So  he  now  confines  himself  to  four  dramas  which 
make  this  Period  altogether  the  least  copiously 
creative  of  his  three  Periods.  Still  he  probably  felt 
even  with  such  a  small  output,  that  he  had  suffi- 
ciently expressed  himself  in  this  phase  of  his  dra- 
matic soul-life.  He  was  young  enough  to  have 
written  much  more,  but  he  preferred  to  stop,  hav- 
ing rounded  the  last  arc  of  his  creative  cycle.  Some 
three  or  possibly  four  years  from  1609  till  1612,  he 
was  employed  in  finishing  this  portion  of  his  work : 
a  brief  time  compared  to  either  of  his  former  Pe- 
riods. In  striking  contrast  with  his  early  exuber- 
ance and  poetic  self-indulgence,  he  will  shorten  the 
duration  of  his  penance.  For  we  are  always  to 
remember  that  Shakespeare  writes  only  from  his 
own  deepest  experience,  whose  present  record  is 
set  down  in  these  Tragi-comedies,  being  his  confes- 
sion and  expiation  through  his  writ.  Hence  they 
are  redemptive  not  merely  of  his  dramatic  charac- 
ters, but  of  himself;  if  he  was  damned  to  the  bot- 
tom of  the  pit  through  jealousy  in  his  Othello,  he 
redeemed  himself  from  its  hell  through  his  Winter's 
Tale,  and  Cymbeline. 

Not  one  of  these  four  plays  is  to  be  found  in  the 
form  of  a  Quarto  published  during  the  poet's  life- 
time ;  they  were  all  first  printed,  as  far  as  our  pres- 
ent knowledge  reaches,  in  the  Folio  of  1623,  seven 
years  after  his  death.  Thus  was  rescued  for  our 
behoof  one  enXire  Period  of  Shakespeare's  Life- 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  483 

drama.  Whence  the  editors,  Heminge  and  Condell, 
obtained  these  dramas,  will  probably  remain  a  se- 
cret. It  should  be  noted,  however,  that  the  Folio, 
does  not  classify  them  except  under  the  general 
head  of  Comedies,  of  which  The  Tempest  is  placed 
first,  and  The  Winter's  Tale  last,  while  Cymheline 
is  set  down  in  the  list  of  Tragedies.  Hence  rises 
the  question:  was  the  poet  himself  aware  of  this 
significant  change  in  his  work  and  in  himself?  Of 
course  only  the  plays  themselves  can  furnish  the 
evidence,  which  they  do  with  emphasis,  revealing 
in  their  action  a  right  portion  of  his  autobiography, 
even  if  veiled  under  his  art's  native  mask. 

Two  other  dramas  are  often  assigned  to  this 
Third  Period,  Pericles  and  Henry  VIII.  But  their 
authenticity  is  much  questioned,  and  it  cannot  be 
discussed  here  whether  they  are  to  be  in  part  or 
wholly  excluded  from  the  Shakespearian  canon. 
Their  titles,  being  proper  names,  seem  not  adjusted 
to  the  poet's  usage  in  designating  his  Comedies. 
Moreover  their  structure,  their  inner  movement  and 
their  general  spirit  appear  quite  different  from 
those  of  the  foregoing  Tragi-comedies,  though  with 
the  latter  they  have  certain  deep  touches  in  com- 
mon. Being  such  doubtful  members  of  the  poet's 
Life-drama,  they  shall  have  to  be  put  aside  for  an- 
other occasion. 

II.  The  next  cardinal  fact  which  we  would  en- 
force is  that  this  Third  Period  is  both  externally 
and  internally,  on  its  surface  and  in  its  deepest,  a 
Return  to  the  First  Period,  especially  to  the  latter 's 


484  SHAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DEAMA 

third  or  comic  Epoch.  Both  are  essentially  sana- 
tive, mediatorial,  restorative  after  some  breach, 
and,  with  a  few  exceptions,  both  turn  out  happy- 
ending.  Thus  we  behold  the  poet  going  back  and 
interlinking  himself  with  his  beginning,  rounding 
out  his  creative  Self  to  its  completed  career,  and 
therein  making  it  a  manifestation  or  exemplar  of 
what  is  universal  in  individual  biography,  as  well 
as  in  the  total  Cosmos. 

To  be  sure  there  is  a  decided  difference  between 
these  two  Periods  in  regard  to  the  meaning  and 
the  depth  of  this  reconciling  or  mediating  process. 
The  first  set  of  Comedies  show  the  way  out  of 
foible,  folly,  mistake ;  but  these  Tragi-comedies  por- 
tray the  remedial  journey  out  of  transgression, 
guilt,  even  out  of  death.  Both  are  indeed  libera- 
tions of  the  unfree  entangled  spirit;  both  rescue 
the  enmeshed  individual,  whereby  both  bear  the 
same  name  in  Shakespeare's  own  terminology — 
Comedies. 

In  this  connection  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  poet 
goes  back  to  the  Mediterranean  South  for  his  dra- 
matic story  and  setting;  he  returns  to  the  Italian 
Renascence  for  materials,  and  even  for  characters 
in  part.  Thus  he  again  Italianizes,  though  with  a 
far  deeper  spiritual  import  as  well  as  in  more 
sombre  colors.  The  dark  religious  Teutonic  side  of 
the  Renascence  seems  now  to  have  taken  hold  of 
him,  in  contrast  with  the  former  sunny,  worldly 
tone  of  his  Italianizing  Comedies,  which  we  have 
elsewhere    evaluated.      Contrast    for    instance    the 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  485 

bright  Italianism  of  Twelfth  Night  against  the  aus- 
tere night-shade  of  The  Winter's  Tale  with  its 
transfer  of  scene  to  the  North.  Yet  both  are  Come- 
dies in  Shakespeare's  nomenclature. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  during  this  Period  the 
poet  retires  more  and  more  to  his  quiet,  contem- 
plative home-life  in  the  country  at  Stratford,  away 
from  the  turmoil  of  London.  Rural  scenery  with 
its  sedative  mood  gives  special  tone  to  three  of  these 
plays;  in  fact  the  flight  from  civilized  struggle  to 
the  simple  sylvan  life  is  in  itself  sanative,  and  be- 
comes the  grand  means  for  the  soul 's  restoration  to 
harmony  after  its  deadly  discords  with  itself  and 
with  the  outer  illusive  circumstance.  So  we  may 
conceive  Shakespeare  during  the  present  Period 
more  and  more  deeply  returning  to  the  calm  and 
the  balm  of  Stratford  out  of  his  furious  tragic  ex- 
perience in  London.  But  therewith  the  earth-heav- 
ing upburst  of  the  volcanic  Shakespeare  simmers 
down  toward  quiescence,  having  become  reconciled 
and  pacified  with  himself  and  with  the  world's 
order. 

Thus  we  seek  to  emphasize  the  deeper  purport  of 
this  Return  which  is  both  spatial  and  spiritual,  re- 
vealing the  poet  both  outwardly  and  inwardly, 
manifesting  itself  in  his  work,  in  his  life's  events, 
and  most  profoundly  in  the  movement  of  his  very 
soul.  Moreover  it  brings  to  light  what  we  may  call 
the  Biographic  Norm,  which  underlies  and  really 
generates  all  individual  Biography,  elevating  it  out 
of  an  orderless  succession  of  personal  happenings 


486  SB  ARE  SFE  ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 

to  a  science  stamped  with  the  principle  of  univer- 
sality. For  at  last  we  have  to  ask:  What  has 
Shakespeare's  life  in  common  with  all  complete 
lives?  Every  human  being  is  a  Self  which  he  has 
to  evolve  through  the  years  and  to  realize  in  accord 
with  its  own  special  endowment.  Now  if  we  can 
find  that  law  of  the  Self  and  express  the  innermost 
process  of  its  development,  we  have  won  the  unit  of 
every  possible  Biography,  the  actual  Psyche  of  the 
Standard  Man.  Hence  it  comes  that  here  so  much 
stress  is  given  to  this  Return  of  Shakespeare  upon 
himself,  not  only  as  the  completion  of  his  individual 
life,  but  as  his  realisation  and  expression  of  all 
mankind's  life. 

III.  We  have  just  emphasized  the  fact  that  this 
Third  Period  of  Shakespeare's  Life-drama  is  a  Re- 
turn out  of  a  discordant  tragic  condition  to  a  time 
of  reconcilement  and  restoration.  Now  we  are  to 
note  that  each  of  these  four  Tragi-comedies  has 
such  a  movement  both  in  its  outer  organism  and  in 
its  inner  soul :  an  estrangement  and  flight  from  the 
existent  social  order  to  some  kind  of  ideal  mediat- 
ing world,  which  heals  the  unhappy  fugitive  and 
sends  him  back  harmonized  to  his  former  life  and 
its  institutional  environment.  Thus  we  behold, 
stating  the  matter  in  abstract  terms.  Flight,  Me- 
diation, and  Return — a  completed  round  of  ulti- 
mate individual  experience.  Here  we  may  catch 
the  present  spiritual  stage  of  the  poet  himself, 
which  he  creatively  projects  into  his  dramatic  art- 
form — Tragi-comedy — which  now  becomes  his  true 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  487 

self-expression,  and  whose  thought  and  structure 
he  repeats  four  times,  with  varying  external  accom- 
paniments. 

It  is  worth  the  more  zealous  worker's  while  to 
compare  these  four  Tragi-comedies  and  their  ideal 
world  of  mediation  with  four  Comedies  of  the  First 
Period  which  also  has  an  ideal  world  of  mediation. 
Measure  for  Measure  with  its  celibate  life  of  re- 
ligion has  its  parallel  in  Love's  Labor's  Lost  with 
its  celibate  life  of  study;  the  Christian  cloister  is 
the  ideal  refuge  of  the  one,  the  heathen  Academe 
of  the  other.  The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona  and 
As  You  Like  It  show  a  flight  to  a  primitive  sylvan 
life  as  remedial  of  wrong,  which  sylvan  life  we  find 
repeated,  undoubtedly  with  important  variations, 
in  the  two  Tragi-comedies,  Cymheline  and  Winter's 
Tale,  whose  restorative  is  their  undefiled  primitive 
world.  Finally  The  Tempest  introduces  the  media- 
torial power  of  supernatural  beings  (Ariel  and  his 
spirits)  while  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  employs 
a  similar  ultra-human  element  (Puck  and  the 
Fairies).  Thus  we  have  the  right  to  say  that 
Shakespeare,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  goes 
back  to  his  earlier  form  of  Comedies,  and  re-writes 
them  in  his  deeper-toned,  though  darker,  less  spon- 
taneous vein.  Moreover  we  are  to  reflect  that  he 
here  reveals  himself  in  one  of  his  favorite  art- 
forms  ;  he  must  have  felt  some  innate  personal  sym- 
pathy with  this  dramatic  movement  of  the  flight 
of  the  stricken  soul  to  some  form  of  the  ideal  world, 
which  has  the  power  of  healing  and  restoring  to 


488  SHAEESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA, 

harmony  the  man  estranged  without  and  within. 

Thus  we  have  found  the  poet  reaching  back  and 
taking  up  again  one  of  his  more  youthful  art-forms, 
and  pouring  into  it  a  fresh,  even  if  somberer  con- 
tent, that  of  his  last  maturest  experience  of  life. 
Once  more  we  note  him  returning  upon  his  former 
self,  and  therein  rounding  out  his  total  Life-drama 
to  its  final  completeness.  In  no  less  than  eight 
plays,  from  first  to  last,  do  we  come  upon  this 
unique  cycle  of  Flight  from  the  corrupt  reality  to 
some  kind  of  Ideal  World  which  through  its  reme- 
dial balm  brings  about  inner  Restoration  and  outer 
Return.  And  a  similar  process  he  has  repeatedly 
hinted  in  his  Sonnets,  for  instance  (No.  60)  he 
meditates :  * '  Nativity  crawls  to  maturity ' '  with  its 
crown  of  works — let  us  call  this  his  First  Period, 
which,  however,  gets  overcast  with  ''crooked 
eclipses ' '  which  ' '  against  his  glory  fight ' ',  wherein 
we  may  take  with  him  a  glance  at  his  Second  or 
Tragic  Period.  And  still  further  in  the  same  Son- 
net the  process  he  elaborates : 

Time  doth  transfix  the  flourish  set  on  youth, 
And  delves  the  parallels  in  beauty's  brow; 
Feeds  on  the  rarities  of  Nature 's  truth 
And  nothing  stands  but  for  his  scythe  to  mow ; 
And  yet  to  times  in  hope  my  verse  shall  stand — . 

So  we  may  conclude  that  old  Time  with  his  scythe, 
the  destructive  genius  of  Tragedy,  cannot  stop  the 
development  nor  kill  the  work  of  William  Shake- 
speare, nor  blast  his  hope  of  immortality.     Indeed 


TEAGI-COMEDIES  489 

there  is  a  passage  from  one  of  his  later  Sonnets 
(146)  which  might  be  prefixed  as  the  most  expres- 
sive motto  to  this  Third  Period  with  its  four  Tragi- 
comedies, when  we  hear  the  poet  make  his  fervid 
appeal  to  his  own  soul : 

Then,  0  soul     .     .    . 
Buy  terms  divine  in  selling  hours  of  dross, 
Within  be  fed,  without  be  rich  no  more; 
So  shalt  thou  feed  on  Death  that  feeds  on  men, 
And  Death  once  dead  there's  no  more  dying  then. 

Such  is  this  new  soul  of  the  poet,  the  tragi-comic 
we  may  call  it,  which  undeaths  Death,  which  slays 
that  destroyer  of  men  who  was  the  bloody  sovereign 
of  the  preceding  period  of  Tragedy.  And  once 
more  we  may  catch  up  from  a  Sonnet  (107)  a  rem- 
iniscent afterglow  of  this  reconciled  time: 

The  mortal  moon  hath  her  eclipse  endured — 
And  peace  proclaims  olives  of  endless  age. 
Now,  with  the  drops  of  this  most  balmy  time 
My  love  looks  fresh,  and  Death  to  me  subscribes. 

Hence  the  reflection  will  spring  up  that  this  en- 
tire Life-drama  of  Shakespeare,  as  it  has  been 
hitherto  set  forth  in  its  three  Periods,  is  one  great 
all-comprehending  Tragi-comedy  whose  conclusion 
is  the  redemption  of  the  tragic  individual  and  the 
recovery  of  the  social  order  from  its  threatened 
tragic  conflict  and  possible  submergence.  So  we 
may  designate  the  poet's  work  taken  in  its  whole- 
ness  as   redemptive,    remedial,   aye   regenerative. 


490  SHAKE8PEABE*8   LIFE-DEAMA 

And  the  full  fruition  of  the  study  of  his  career  is 
to  be  gotten  not  from  merely  one  of  his  plays 
though  it  be  his  greatest,  not  even  from  one  of  his 
Periods,  though  it  contains  his  grandest  poetry  and 
largest  characterisation,  but  from  the  entire  all- 
embracing  round  of  his  Life-drama  in  its  innermost 
psychical  evolution.  Such  is  indeed  the  right  bio- 
graphy of  the  man  when  it  is  worthily  construed. 

Thus  the  complete  work  of  Shakespeare  reaches 
its  supreme  fulfilment  as  one  of  the  Literary  Bibles 
of  mankind.  This  unified  full-rounded  Tragi-com- 
edy  of  his  Life-drama  is  a  new  revelation  of  the 
Divine  Order,  though  his  earlier  Comedies,  with 
which  he  starts,  belong  rather  to  the  Mundane  Or- 
der. Hence  springs  the  religiosity  which  pervades 
these  four  Tragi- comedies ;  they  are  a  kind  of 
epiphany  of  the  supernal  government  of  the  Uni- 
verse and  of  man's  portion  therein.  And  to  the 
student  of  Universal  Literature  we  may  suggest  at 
this  point  the  parallelism  of  Shakespeare's  total 
Life-drama  'with  Dante's  threefold  world-poem, 
which  its  poet  also  calls  a  Comedy,  but  not  a  Divine 
Comedy,  which  title  of  it  is  not  of  his  coinage. 

And  now  it  is  in  place  to  make  here  the  further 
reflection:  all  our  poet's  Sonnets,  from  which  we 
have  just  cited  briefly,  one  hundred  and  fifty  four 
of  them  taken  together,  constitute  in  their  very 
heart  or  in  their  ultimate  quintessential  process  an- 
other parallel  Tragi-comedy,  showing  likewise  the 
Breach,  the  Expiation  and  the  Return  in  deep  cor- 
respondence with  the  foregoing  Pan-drama  of  the 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  491 

poet.  For  they  form  his  poetic  diary  during  a 
dozen  years  and  more,  mirroring  very  diversely  in 
their  little  subjective  facets  all  his  three  Periods, 
comic,  tragic  and  tragi-comic.  Shakespeare  as 
Prospero,  looking  backwards  sets  down  a  round 
dozen  years  as  the  duration  of  his  Ariel's  tragic 
torment  when  his  spirit  was  wedged  f  atef ully  ' '  in  a 
cloven  pine": 

Within  which  rift 

Imprisoned  thou  didst  painfully  remain 

A  dozen  years  .  .  .  thy  groans 

Did  make  wolves  howl  and  penetrate  the  breasts 

Of  ever-angry  bears  ...  it  was  mine  art  .  .  . 

That  made  gape  the  pine  and  let  thee  out. 

So  the  poet  in  sublimely  sympathetic  speech  meta- 
phors his  spiritual  process,  and  even  tallies  the 
number  of  its  years. 

Undoubtedly  there  are  in  the  Sonnets  many  di- 
verse moods  bubbling  up  according  to  the  bent  of 
the  moment  when  the  record  is  set  down.  They  run 
the  entire  gamut  from  petty  folly  to  loftiest  wis- 
dom, from  lowest  sensuality  to  highest  spirituality, 
from  Hell  to  Heaven,  with  a  Protean  transforma- 
tion of  idea  and  image.  Such  is  the  nature  of  this 
truly  Shakespearian  diary.  Still  within  its  copious 
overflow  of  vagaries  lurks  a  drama,  just  his  own 
drama,  verily  a  Tragi-comedy,  mirroring  himself 
in  relation  to  that  strangely  elusive  woman-soul 
shadowed  forth  by  him  as  the  Dark  Lady. 

IV.     Here  we  are  brought  to  grapple  with  an- 


492  SHAKESPE ABIE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

other  very  significant  change  which  stamps  the 
deepest  constitutive  mark  upon  this  Third  Period : 
it  is  the  poet's  entirely  new  attitude  toward  the 
female  character.  From  his  destructive  tragic  view 
of  the  woman-soul  as  just  set  forth,  he  turns  to 
make  it  more  profoundly  constructive  and  reme- 
dial than  ever  before,  even  than  in  his  happiest 
love-work  of  the  First  Period.  Let  the  reader  stop 
and  ponder  well  this  startling  transformation  of 
Shakespeare's  Life-drama.  The  woman  (say  Her- 
mione)  now  takes  her  place  as  the  central  figure  of 
the  whole  Tragi-comedy,  becoming  the  ultimate 
mediatorial  instrument  of  repentance,  atonement 
and  regeneration,  in  fine  the  right  bearer  of  the 
poet's  new  reconciled  world-order. 

Very  different,  in  fact  just  opposite  was  his 
treatment  of  her  in  his  Tragedies,  as  we  may  recol- 
lect. There  she  was  Vampire,  Fury,  Destroyer; 
sensual,  faithless  to  love  and  to  truth,  the  arch  dis- 
sembler; verily  the  representative "  of  the  woman- 
soul  lost,  again  the  betrayer  of  Paradise  to  the  Ser- 
pent. What  a  terrible  procession  of  hag-hearted 
Eumenides  of  the  feminine  type  sweep  through  the 
poet 's  Second  Period !  And  what  could  have  been 
the  cause  of  his  change  and  redemption  from  such 
race-hating  misogyny? 

But  without  waiting  for  a  reply  which  may  come 
later,  let  us  now  herald  the  good  news  that  the  poet 
has  made  another  nodal  transition,  and  his  last, 
having  evolved  out  of  his  tragic  destructive  time 
into  his  tragi-comic  reconstructive  creation,  which 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  493 

restores  to  his  female  folk  their  reconciling  media- 
torial character,  but  with  new  and  far  deeper  at- 
tributes. Again  this  may  be  deemed  another  phase 
of  the  poet's  return  to  his  earlier  work  and  to  his 
primal  self,  yet  with  a  vast  fresh  experience  of  life 
and  writ,  which  spurs  his  genius  once  more  to  its 
basic  self-expression. 

For  the  purpose  of  illustrating,  and  enforcing 
these  cardinal  distinctions,  here  seems  the  fit  place 
to  bring  before  the  mind  of  the  reader  some  spe- 
cially selected  examples  taken  from  the  plays  them- 
selves. Accordingly  we  shall  pick  out  three  sets  of 
typical  female  characters  belonging  to  the  des- 
ignated Periods.  And  it  appears  to  add  a  kind  of 
towardly  numerical  harmony  if  we  give  to  each  of 
these  three  sets  three  representative  Shakespearian 
women,  thus: 

(1)  Portia,  Rosalind,  Helena — who  belong  to 
the  First  Period,  and  reveal  their  unique  power  in 
overcoming  the  obstacles  to  their  marriage  with  the 
man  they  love — Comedies. 

(2)  Gertrude,  Goneril,  Cressida — who  belong  to 
the  Second  Period,  and  show  themselves  violators 
and  disrupters  of  their  institution,  the  Family, 
thus  representing  the  negative  woman-soul  in  the 
social  order — Tragedies. 

(3)  Isabella,  Imogen,  Hermione — who  belong 
to  the  Third  Period  and  manifest  their  distinctive 
reconciling  character  by  healing  the  broken  do- 
mestic tie,  by  redeeming  and  restoring  the  fallen 
husband  and  the  fallen  institution — Tragi-comedies. 


494  SHAKESPIE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

It  is  evident  that  this  third  set  are  seeking  to 
overcome  and  to  heal  the  tragic  conflict  and  disrup- 
tion produced  by  the  second  set.  Thus  they  are  in 
the  deepest  sense  mediators  of  the  estranged  spirit, 
reconcilers,  redeemers.  To  such  a  lofty  position, 
Madonnaward,  the  poet  now  elevates  the  woman- 
soul  in  his  latest  dramas,  which  may  be  taken  not 
only  as  his  final  literary  testament  to  the  future, 
but  also  as  the  ultimate  supreme  stage  of  his  own 
life 's  evolution.  And  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
these  three  sets  of  female  characters  reveal  a  more 
personal  and  inly  movement  of  the  poet's  self-ex- 
pression than  his  male  characters.  His  deepest  ex- 
perience always  springs  out  of  the  feminine  half  of 
humanity  and  of  himself;  hence  his  basic  theme  is 
love  in  its  three  cardinal  forms — love  immediate, 
love  estranged,  and  love  restored — which  also  sig- 
nalize distinctively  the  three  Periods  of  his  Life- 
drama. 

Again  we  have  to  ask  if  this  new  life  and  writ  of 
repentance  and  reconciliation  had  anything  to  do 
with  his  own  direct  experience.  Did  Shakespeare 
himself  pass  through  some  such  purgatorial  ordeal 
with  its  contrition  and  reparation?  We  know  that 
during  this  Period  he  had  more  fully  than  ever  re- 
turned to  home  and  family  at  Stratford,  where  he 
lived  again  with  wife  and  children,  with  mother, 
kindred,  and  friends  (his  father  had  already  de- 
ceased in  1601).  Evidently  the  grand  separation 
and  estrangement  of  his  career  had  been  repented 
of  and  atoned;  the  transgressor  had  expiated  and 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  '  495 

made  good  his  former  lapse,  restoring  himself  to 
his  institutional  life  from  its  start  in  his  birth- 
town.  Noteworthy  is  the  fact  that  the  wronged  but 
forgiving  and  reconciling  wife  plays  such  a  prom- 
inent part  in  these  Tragi-comedies,  and  never  be- 
fore. Then  too  we  observe  now  for  the  first  time 
the  poet's  loving  and  detailed  portraiture  of  the 
devoted  young  maiden,  as  if  he  had  the  model  at 
his  own  hearth  in  his  young  daughter  Judith,  who 
in  1600  was  fifteen  years  old. 

So  we  repeat  our  view  that  Shakespeare  in  these 
Tragi-comedies  was  composing  a  chapter  of  his  own 
biography.  Moreover  what  he  wrote  was  his  heart 's 
very  confession  given  at  the  altar  of  his  soul, 
whence  he  received  from  his  own  conscience  his 
priestly  absolution.  Perhaps  above  all  men  who 
have  wielded  the  pen  he  made  his  writ  the  means  of 
his  spiritual  recovery,  although  he  also  won  with 
the  same  pen  monkey,  fame,  even  immortality.  If, 
as  we  hold,  the  Tragic  Muse  is  ultimately  his  angel 
of  rescue  from  the  Furies  of  his  own  negative  na- 
ture, and  saves  him  through  her  gift  of  utterance 
from  the  real  tragedy  of  his  Genius,  we  have  to 
think  that  these  Tragi-comedies  tell  openly  in  his 
dramatic  art-form  the  way  of  his  restoration  and 
redemption. 

The  love  of  woman,  accordingly,  has  come  back 
to  him,  but  transfigured  and  endowed  with  a  fre^ 
restorative  power,  renovating  his  productive  en- 
ergy, and  indeed  connecting  him  ultimately  with 
creation  itself.     The  genetic  instinct  of  his  Genius 


496  SHAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA. 

again  drives  him  to  deliver  a  new  message  to  man- 
kind from  the  Creator.  Moreover  this  new  message 
makes  all  his  works  one  completed  work,  having 
finished  so  to  speak,  the  colossal  statue  of  his  total 
Life-drama,  whereby  his  personal  self  becomes  an 
image  or  rather  a  realisation  of  the  universally 
creative  Self,  and  our  human  consciousness  is  seen 
to  be  a  revelation  of  God-consciousness,  a  veritable 
Theophany.  And  we  may  repeat  that  from  this 
view-point  all  individual  biography  shows  itself  as 
an  exemplar  and  indeed  offspring  of  Universal 
Biography. 

Still  there  remains  for  us  the  harder,  subtler, 
obscurer  question:  What  brought  about  this  life- 
fulfilling  change  in  the  poet?  Can  we  catch  even 
remotely  and  perchance  but  fleetingly,  some  glimpse 
of  its  source? 

V.  It  is  evident  that  throughout  these  Tragi- 
comedies he  has  gotten  rid  of  that  insidious  Dark 
Lady  who  so  long  cajoled  him,  and  goaded  him, 
through  her  Satanic  magic  of  infatuation,  to  his 
tragic  outlook  on  woman,  man,  and  the  world.  To 
be  sure  we  may  still  trace  in  him  memories  of  the 
former  awful  scourge,  since  no  experience  of  his 
ever  gets  lost,  though  it  be  shown  not  obliterated 
but  transcended.  So  that  burning  curse,  branded 
on  his  brain  and  seared  through  his  heart  to  the 
very  bottom,  that  curse  whose  all-annihilating  up- 
burst  we  may  hear  worded  strongest  in  King  Lear, 
has  become  not  only  mitigated  but  transformed 
into  the  sweet  and  tender  voice  of  forgiveness  and 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  497 

reconciliation.  Furious  London  no  longer  sub- 
merges forbearing  Stratford  in  its  tragic  maelstrom, 
but  actually  the  mild  rural  townlet  is  made  to  pla- 
cate and  change  into  her  own  peace-breathing  na- 
ture the  struggle-torn  metropolis.  The  Dark  Lady 
has  in  some  way  been  unqueened  of  her  long  sov- 
ereignty over  the  poet.  Personally  the  greatest 
conquest  of  his  life  doubtless,  but  bringing  the 
counterstroke  that,  along  with  his  placated  soul,  his 
Genius  also  becomes  pacified,  moderated,  relieved 
of  the  world-quaking  paroxysms  of  its  fight  with  its 
own  tragic  damnation. 

Hence  we  must  be  ready  to  find  a  considerable 
let-down  of  the  cosmic  energy  which  breaks  forth 
into  such  mighty  utterance  throughout  his  Trage- 
dies, and  which  caps  them  as  Time's  greatest  liter- 
ature. Still  we  are  not  to  think  that  this  present 
increased  placidity  of  self-expression  is  due  to  dis- 
ease or  even  to  exhaustion,  as  some  critics  have 
maintained;  rather  is  it  a  sign  of  restoration  and 
of  a  deeper  health,  though  certainly  less  smiting  in 
word-power  and  passion.  Surely  The  Tempest, 
probably  his  last  play,  reveals  him  still  the  inex- 
hausted  if  not  the  inexhaustible  Shakespeare  at  the 
top  of  his  creation;  but  mark  its  very  suggestive 
transition  from  the  storm  and  wreck  of  the  first 
scene  to  the  pervasive  sunshine  of  the  rest  of  the 
play  with  its  penitence  and  forgiveness  sealed  by 
the  happy-making  festivities  of  love  and  marriage. 

There  are  many  signs  in  the  Sonnets  that  this 
separation  from  the  Dark  Lady  took  place  not 


SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA. 


merely  once,  but  repeatedly;  numerous  were  the 
fallings-out  and  the  makings-up,  for  both  the  man 
and  the  woman  seem  to  have  given  equal  provoca- 
tion and  then  shown  equal  penitence  for  pecadillos. 
We  hear  in  an  early  stage  (No.  36)  the  poet's  sad 
declaration:  ''Let  me  confess  that  we  two  must 
be  twain",  but  he  soon  takes  it  back.  Later  (No. 
87)  he  cries  out  in  a  deep  fit  of  despondency: 
''Farewell!  thou  art  too  dear  for  my  possessing", 
still  he  keeps  her  a  while  longer,  and  she  keeps  him. 
But  at  last  we  may  catch  what  appears  his  final 
resolve  with  its  consolation  (No.  119)  : 

0  benefit  of  ill !  now  I  find  true 

That  better  is  by  evil  still  made  better, 

And  ruined  love,  when  it  is  built  anew 

Grows  fairer  than  at  first,  more  strong,  far 

greater. 
So  I  return  rebuked  to  my  content. 
And  gain  by  ill  thrice  more  than  I  have  spent. 

A  scrutinizing  look  into  the  last  four  lines  of  this 
same  Sonnet  will  show  the  poet  taking  a  rapid 
glance  backwards  through  his  three  Periods.  That 
"ruined  love"  (evidently  tragic)  he  is  going  now 
to  rebuild  so  that  it  will  be  "fairer,  stronger,  far 
greater"  (surely  in  these  Tragi -comedies)  than  it 
was  ' ' at  first ' '  (namely  in  the  early  Comedies) .  In 
fact  he  employs  the  very  word  by  which  we  have 
alread  expressed  the  present  rounding  out  of  his 
Life-drama;  that  is,  he  will  '* return"  to  his  "con- 
tent", (say,  to  his  Happy  Sexennium). 


TBAGICOMEDIES  499 

There  is  one  of  these  Sonnets  (No.  81)  very 
plaintive  and  deep-toned,  which  may  be  taken  as 
his  final  sad  retrospect,  when  has  been  brought  to 
a  close  his  much  perturbed  but  enormously  stimu- 
lating intercourse  with  the  Dark  Lady.  We  are 
to  listen  to  him  summoning  before  his  imagination 
the  eternal  worth  of  all  his  writings  (probably  both 
dramas  and  sonnets)  which  she  has  inspired  him  to 
compose.  The  whole  Sonnet  is  suffused  with  the 
melancholy  of  a  last  farewell : 

Or  I  shall  live  your  epitaph  to  make, 
Or  you  survive  when  I  in  earth  am  rotten; 
From  hence  your  memory  Death  cannot  take, 
Although  in  me  each  part  will  be  forgotten. 
Your  name  from  hence  immortal  life  shall  have, 
Though  I,  once  gone,  to  all  the  world  must  die ; 
The  earth  can  yield  me  but  a  common  grave, 
When  you  entombed  in  men 's  eyes  shall  lie ; 
Your  monument  shall  be  my  gentle  verse. 
Which  eyes  not  yet  created  shall  o'er  read. 
And  tongues  to  be  your  being  shall  rehearse, 
When  all  the  breathers  of  this  world  are  dead ; 
You  still  shall  live — such  virture  hath  my  pen — 
Where  breath  most  breathes — e'en  in  the  mouths 
of  men. 

Such  seems  to  be  the  poet's  backlook  at  his  life's 
deepest  most  creative  passion,  when  he  surveys  the 
amount  and  the  quality  of  his  verse  which  the  Dark 
Lady  has  called  forth  from  his  Muse.  One  cannot 
help  drawing  certain  inferences  from  the  above  in- 


500  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA 

timately  self -revealing  lines.  (1)  Shakespeare  ex- 
pects here  that  his  writings  will  be  published,  so 
that  people  yet  unborn  will  read  them ;  hence  these 
Sonnets  are  not  simply  for  his  private  friends,  as 
is  sometimes  stated,  but  for  the  world,  for  all  fu- 
turity. (2)  He  is  absolutely  convinced  of  the  last- 
ing worth  of  his  poetry — a  conviction  which  he  has 
repeatedly  expressed  elsewhere  with  equal  empha- 
sis. (3)  A  reading  public  for  his  works,  ''which 
eyes  not  yet  created  shall  o'er  read",  he  summons 
with  confidence  before  his  mind,  showing  that  he 
was  well  aware  of  his  chief  future  constituency. 
(4)  In  strong  contrast,  with  the  immortality  of  his 
writ,  he  stresses  the  evanescence  of  his  individual 
life:  ''I,  once  gone,  to  all  the  world  must  die". 
This  contrast  is  often  found  in  Shakespeare ;  some- 
thing of  the  kind  we  may  hear  in  Hamlet 's  defiant 
words : 

I  do  not  set  my  life  at  a  pin 's  fee ; 

As  for  my  soul,  what  can  it  do  to  that 

Being  a  thing  immortal  as  itself 

(Namely  the  Ghost). 

The  poet  having  passed  through  the  last  stage 
of  separation  from  his  Dark  Lady  now  brings  his 
sonneted  diary  to  an  end,  inasmuch  as  the  deepest 
compelling  source  of  its  poetic  inspiration  has  van- 
ished from  his  experience.  Accordingly  in  1609, 
doubtless  with  his  consent  even  if  not  with  his  di- 
rect co-operation,  the  complete  book  of  his  Sonnets 
is  published.  Probably  he  did  not  proof-read  or 
correct  or  arrange  in  sequence  his  text. 


TBAGI-C0MEDIE8  501 

VI.  In  recent  years  a  new  problem  pertaining 
to  the  Sonnets  and  their  author  has  forged  to  the 
fore:  can  the  Dark  Lady  be  directly  pointed  out, 
named,  and  to  a  certain  extent  biographied?  Let 
the  answer  be  at  once  set  down  and  grappled  with : 
Thomas  Tyler  of  London  University  about  the 
year  1890  published  his  book  modestly  called  Shake- 
speare's Sonnets,  which  a  number  of  enthusiastic 
students  of  the  poet  have  heralded  as  the  most  orig- 
inal contribution  to  Shakespearian  literature 
hitherto  made  by  any  Englishman.  "Whether  this 
be  so  or  not,  must  here  be  left  out  of  discussion; 
but  we  shall  at  once  state  the  result  of  Tyler's  con- 
siderate and  considerable  search:  The  Dark  Lady 
of  the  Sonnets  is  to  be  identified  as  Mistress  Mary 
Fitton,  maid  of  honor  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  which 
service  she  is  declared  to  have  entered  about  the 
year  1595,  being  then  a  young  lady  of  seventeen, 
as  her  baptismal  record  dates  her  birth  in  1578. 

Enough  opportunities  she  had  of  seeing  Shake- 
speare, who  was  the  already  famous  dramatist  of 
London,  when  his  theatrical  company  played  at 
court,  and  lent  their  art  to  other  festivities.  But 
especially  about  1597,  when  Love's  Labor's  Lost  was 
given  in  its  supposed  new  form,  her  picture  was 
painted  very  elaborately  by  the  poet  under  the 
character  of  Rosaline,  who  is  held  to  represent 
Mary  Fitton  in  her  dark  eyes  and  features,  (hence 
her  title  of  the  Dark  Lady)  as  well  as  in  her  daring 
behavior  and  witty  sallies.  But  the  main  point  is 
that  Shakespeare  is  now  declared  to  have  found  the 


502  SHAKESPEABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

creative  female  ideal  ever  anew  inspiring  his  Muse 
to  produce  that  gallery  of  exquisitely  loving  and 
lovely  women  who  shine  all  through  his  Happy 
Sexennium,  whereof  an  account  has  already  been 
given. 

So  the  poet's  heart-life  bubbled  up  joyously  and 
creatively  for  several  years,  portraying  mainly  the 
woman  as  love's  protagonist  winning  against  all 
obstacles  the  man  of  her  choice.  Doubtless  there 
were  occasional  cloudlets  streaking  the  pair's  fe- 
licity, for  both  with  good  reason  could  hardly  help 
jealously  suspecting :  so  we  catch  from  many  a  little 
turn  in  the  Sonnets.  But  now  falls  the  awfulest 
backstroke  possible  upon  the  poet.  He  heard  his 
fate's  news,  for  all  London  had  caught  the  ma- 
licious buzzing  of  the  scandal  which  is  thus  forth- 
rightly  recorded  by  one  of  Elizabeth's  highest  of- 
ficials, evidently  after  due  investigation:  ''Mis- 
tress Fitton  is  proved  with  child,  and  the  Earl  of 
Pembroke,  being  examined,  confesseth  a  fact,  but 
utterly  renounceth  all  marriage."  Such  was  the 
violent  shock  at  Court,  felt  most  distinctly  in  what 
the  reporter  tells  further:  ''I  fear  they  both  will 
dwell  in  the  Tower  a  while,  for  the  Queen  hath 
vowed  to  send  them  thither."  Redder  must  have 
blazed  Elizabeth's  red  hair  at  this  defiance  of  her 
courtly  etiquette  as  well  as  of  her  personal  vanity. 
More  shreds  of  that  scandal  have  floated  down  into 
the  present,  but  the  prying  reader  can  find  them  in 
other  books,  to  his  and  our  better  satisfaction. 

Now  if  this  quake  tumbled  up  the  Court  to  such 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  503 

turmoil,  what  an  outburst ing  volcano  must  it  have 
caused  to  shoot  forth  from  the  breast  and  mouth  of 
William  Shakespeare,  her  lover  and  her  poet  with 
a  worldful  of  emotion  in  his  heart  and  of  imagina- 
tion in  his  brain !  His  was  the  greatest  soul  of  all 
the  land  harboring  the  mightiest  self-expression; 
what  new  word,  especially  about  the  female  char- 
acter, will  he  now  have  to  say?  This  torturing  in- 
fernal experience  must  also  have  its  right  record; 
still  he  is  totally  unable  to  expel  from  his  bosom 
that  love  of  the  woman  of  whose  utter  falsity  he 
has  become  well  aware.  Out  of  such  a  lacerated 
heart  we  may  hear  him  sigh  a  Sonnet  (No.  95)  to 
hi  J'  ^rk  Lady  or  perchance  Mary  Fitton : 

How  sweet  and  lovely  dost  thou  make  the  shame 
"Which,  like  a  canker  in  the  fragrant  rose. 
Doth  spot  the  beauty  of  thy  budding  name ! 
0,  in  what  sweets  dost  thou  thy  sins  inclose ! 
That  tongue  that  tells  the  story  of  thy  days, 
Making  lascivious  comment  on  thy  sport, 
Cannot  dispraise  but  in  a  kind  of  praise ; 
Naming  thy  name  blesses  an  ill  report. 

Such  is  her  malignant  witchery  over  her  broken- 
hearted lover,  and  well  does  she  know  her  sov- 
ereignty, sporting  with  him  as  the  cat  with  the 
caught  mouse,  who  cannot  escape,  at  least  not  yet. 
Still  the  poet  will  find  his  relief,  yea  his  revenge, 
we  may  call  it,  through  that  all-rescuing  gift  of 
his,  namely  self-expression  in  poetry.  He  will  cast 
out  of  his  seething  bosom  into  the  off-bearing  word 


504  SHAKESPEABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

his  heart's  trituration,  his  tragic  emotion,  even 
Death  itself. 

Here  we  are  to  note  this  telling  synchronism :  the 
foregoing  deed  of  Mary  Fitton  in  connection  with 
the  Earl  of  Pembroke  took  place  in  1600-1,  which 
coincides  to  the  very  year  with  the  start  of  Shake- 
speare's Tragic  Period,  as  before  set  forth.  His 
Hamlet  must  have  been  soon  if  not  already  on  the 
way,  introducing  those  two  fatefuUy  blasted  women, 
the  mother  (Gertrude)  and  the  lady-love  (Ophe- 
lia), early  representatives  of  that  new  sort  of 
Shakespearian  femininity  whose  dark  destiny  sings 
with  many  a  throeful  reverberation  through  all  his 
Tragedies  for  some  nine  years.  So  with  this  tran- 
sitional deed  and  time  he  turns  his  life's  most  sig- 
nificant yet  terrific  node,  from  happy  Portia  and 
Rosalind  to  hapless  Cressida  and  Goneril,  from  the 
woman-soul  loveable  and  loved  to  the  woman-soul 
faithless  and  fated,  loveless  and  lost. 

Such  was  the  central  deepest  transition  of  the 
poet  both  in  his  life  and  in  his  art,  both  really  and 
ideally.  He  passes  from  joy-radiating  Comedy  to 
woe-thrilling  Tragedy,  still  through  the  experience 
of  love,  which  both  saves  and  slays,  and  which  thus 
reveals  its  twofold  opposite  nature  both  as  pre- 
server and  destroyer  of  man.  A  ruin  he  now  re- 
gards his  love  of  woman,  indeed  he  calls  it  his 
' '  ruined  love ' ',  which,  however,  his  undying  aspira- 
tion still  hopes  ''to  rebuild".  And  this  brings  us 
to  the  second  supreme  soul-renewing  transforma- 
tion in  the  poet 's  Life-drama :    Why  and  how  could 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  505 

he  pass  out  of  this  mortal  tragic  cataclysm  to  his 
immortal  redemptive  creativity? 

VII.  Confession,  repentance,  atonement  we 
have  found  to  be  the  deepest  and  most  enduring 
notes  struck  in  these  four  Tragi-comedies,  being 
emphasized  as  the  turning-point  to  recovery  and 
regeneration  on  the  part  of  the  guilty  soul,  the 
elsewise  tragic  transgressor.  Undoubtedly  Shake- 
speare has  often  used  the  penitential  process  before 
this  time,  even  in  his  early  plays,  but  never  to  the 
same  extent,  nor  with  the  same  soul-stricken  and 
compelling  power  of  conviction.  And  especially 
has  he  turned  the  Sonnets  into  a  kind  of  confes- 
sional, through  which  fervently  throb  the  throes  of 
repentance.  So  much  we  have  already  enforced 
with  some  repetition. 

But  now  comes  the  perhaps  surprising  fact  that 
the  Dark  Lady  also  has  her  spells  of  deep  contri- 
tion and  remorse  for  her  manifold  sins,  all  of  which 
or  at  least  many  of  which  are  right  fully  and 
frankly  reported  by  her  heart-shent  but  ever-for- 
giving lover  still  idealizing  her  in  his  Sonnets.  At 
the  conclusion  of  one  of  these  (No.  34)  he  seems 
talking  to  her  as  if  face  to  face : 

Though  thou  repent,  yet  have  I  still  the  loss; 
The  offender's  sorrow  lends  but  weak  relief 
To  him  that  bears  the  strong  offense  ^s  cross. 

Here  we  see  the  sorrowful  Shakespeare  hearken  to 
the  repentant  Dark  Lady 's  ' '  strong  offense ' ',  which 
she  confesses,  and  we  also  catch  his  woe-laden  an- 


506  SHAKESPEABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 

swer.  Even  her  woman's  tears  are  not  wanting, 
which,  however,  soften  still  more  his  heart  to  for- 
giveness : 

Ah,  but  those  tears  are  pearl,  which  thy  love 

sheds 
And  they  are  rich  and  ransom  all  ill  deeds. 

We  cannot  help  asking  our  discerning  reader  at 
this  point  whether  Shakespeare  could  employ  such 
tender  condoning  words  to  a  man,  as  is  commonly 
supposed,  be  he  called  Southampton,  Pembroke, 
Hughes,  or  any  other  male-named  malefactor  dug 
up  by  the  vast  horde  of  commentators? 

Not  a  few  are  the  similar  deepfelt  turns  possible 
only  to  the  man  and  woman  in  the  ultimate  inti- 
macies of  a  mutual  love-life,  which  we  may  sense 
in  the  Sonnets,  for  just  such  a  record  is  their 
chiefest  human  worth  in  themselves  as  well  as  in 
the  poet's  biography.  Another  little  echo  of  the 
same  sort  we  may  hear  in  the  next  Sonnet  (No.  35) 

No  more  be  grieved  at  that  which  thou  hast  done : 
Roses  have  thorns,  and  silver  fountains  mud; 
Clouds  and  eclipses  stain  both  moon  and  sun 
And  loathsome  canker  lives  in  sweetest  bud. 

So  the  poet  seeks  to  allay  the  fair  culprit's  peni- 
tential sorrows  for  her  trespasses,  which  she  seems 
to  be  telling  him  as  her  real  confessor,  from  whom 
she  knows  she  will  receive  easy  absolution.  It  is 
possible  that  the  famous  lines  (No.  107)  already 
cited 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  507 

The  mortal  moon  hath  her  eclipse  endured  .  .  . 
And  peace  proclaims  olives  of  endless  age 

pertains  to  both  Shakespeare  as  well  as  his  Dark 
Lady,  and  celebrate  their  final  peaceful  recovery 
after  their  long  happy  and  hapless  discipline  of 
love. 

Again  the  question  rises:  Can  the  Dark  Lady 
in  her  present  mood  be  identified  with  aforesaid 
Mary  Fitton  ?  Has  the  latter  too  reached  the  stage 
of  final  repentance  and  resolved  to  quit  her  gay  life 
in  London,  returning  to  her  country  home,  as 
Shakespeare  returns  fully  to  his  Stratford  about 
the  same  time?  She  is  drawing  dangerously  near 
to  thirty  years  old ;  time  and  fast  living  have  begun 
to  stamp  their  tell-tale  creases  and  their  jaundiced 
colors  upon  her  looks,  which  she  tries  to  paint 
away,  to  the  poet's  disgust,  as  we  may  infer  from 
some  of  the  Sonnets.  She  has  certainly  had  her 
youth's  frolic,  and  sown  a  very  prolific  crop  of  wild 
oats,  having  given  birth,  among  her  various  other 
fertilities,  to  three  infants  all  born  outside  of  wed- 
lock, but  none  of  them  ascribed  to  Shakespeare. 
Mr.  Tyler,  our  special  reporter  on  these  delicate 
matters,  informs  us  that  about  1607-8,  she  definitely 
marries  a  Mr.  Polwhele,  though  she  is  doubtfully 
credited  with  two  other  husbands  at  different  times 
in  her  career,  but  not  one  of  them  named  William 
Shakespeare.  With  this  last  husband,  however,  she 
retires  from  London  to  her  native  rural  Gaws- 
worth  where  she  long  lives  fameless,  yet  repentant 


508  SB AKESP'E ABE'S   LIFE-DEAMA, 

and  reconciled,  we  hope,  surviving  many  years  her 
world-renowned  poetizer,  whom,  in  addition  to  his 
other  greatnesses,  she  has  made  the  most  enduring 
and  colossal  lover  that  ever  poured  out  his  heart 
into  human  speech. 

And  now  this  loftiest  culmination  of  his  love- 
life  is  what  he  is  going  to  celebrate  in  his  native 
art-form,  producing  what  some  sympathetic  critics 
have  deemed  his  grandest  drama,  Antony  and  Cleo- 
patra. There  is  little  doubt  that  he  has  brooded 
over  this  theme  many  a  season,  at  least  ever  since 
he,  absorbing  old  Plutarch  for  material,  wrote  his 
Julius  Caesar,  at  the  beginning  of  his  Tragic  Pe- 
riod. For  then  he  had  already  come  to  feel  the  ir- 
resistible but  mortal  fascination  of  his  own  dark 
Cleopatra,  whose  world-overmastering  Antony  he 
might  well  conceive  himself  to  be  in  his  poetically 
heroic  deed.  Let  the  synchronism  again  be  marked 
that  the  completion  of  this  drama  is  dated  1607-8, 
the  time  when  Mary  Fitton,  through  her  marriage 
and  retirement  is  supposed  to  have  passed  forever 
outside  of  Shakespeare's  personal  horizon. 

Readers  of  the  poet  have  often  detected  the  Dark 
Lady  of  the  Sonnets  acting  herself  out  in  word  and 
deed  under  the  mask  of  the  Queen  of  Egypt,  who 
is  also  ' '  black  with  Phoebus '  amorous  kisses ' '.  But 
what  we  would  now  enforce  is  that  Cleopatra  in 
her  last  utterances  shows  herself  a  repentant 
woman,  whose  sighful  voice  we  may  hear  in 

My  desolation  does  begin  to  make 
A  better  life  (Act.  V.  So.  2). 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  509 

So  she  breathes  her  change  in  deep  self-communion. 
And  in  the  same  scene  she  openly  confesses  to 
Caesar 

I  do  confess  I  have 

Been  laden  with  like  frailties  which  before 

Have  often  shamed  our  sex. 

Nor  should  we  omit  another  touch  which  seems  to 
recall  Mary  Fitton  the  mother,  even  if  her  chil- 
dren, like  Cleopatra's  came  of  irregular  love: 

Peace,  peace. 
Dost  thou  not  see  my  baby  at  my  breast 
That  sucks  the  nurse  asleep. 

It  is  her  motherhood,  then,  which  solaces  the  dying 
thought  of  Cleopatra,  even  when  she  puts  the 
deadly  asp  to  her  bosom,  breathing  out  her  life 
in  her  last  reconciled  words  as  they  gasp  off  slowly 
into  eternal  silence: 

As  sweet  as  balm,  as  soft  as  air,  as  gentle — 

Thus  Shakespeare  seizes  from  antiquity  and  cele- 
brates what  may  be  deemed  the  sovereign  love-pair 
of  Universal  History,  which  has  hardly  furnished 
another  like  them  in  the  course  of  the  intervening 
centuries  down  till  to-day.  For  here  the  love  of 
man  and  woman  towers  far  above  a  small  com- 
munity's embroilment  (like  that  of  Romeo  and 
Juliet),  mounting  up  to  a  world-historical  event  on 
which  future  ages  may  be  said  to  hinge  for  a  time. 
In  such  a  colossal  framework  the  poet  has  dared  to 


510  SHAK^ESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA, 

enshrine  his  passion  for  the  Dark  Lady,  where  it 
still  may  be  felt  in  all  its  burning  intensity  as  well 
as  in  its  Titanic  grandiosity.  It  is  another  in- 
stance among  many  that  Shakespeare  appreciated 
the  lasting  greatness  of  himself  and  of  his  work, 
even  outstripping  Roman  Antony  in  significance 
for  human  History. 

So,  if  we  may  trust  the  double  record,  set  down 
both  in  the  Sonnets  and  in  the  Dramas,  we  have 
finally  to  behold  Shakespeare  and  the  Dark  Lady, 
the  man  and  woman,  perchance  another  Adam  and 
Eve,  as  two  penitents  atoning  for  their  past  lives 
with  an  internal  and  also  external  act  of  contrition 
and  expiation,  both  of  them  fleeing  from  their 
Babylon  to  an  innocent  idyllic,  yet  institutional 
life  in  the  country.  What  a  far-echoing  report  of 
themselves  they  have  left  behind,  reverberant 
through  space  and  down  time,  having  together 
created  the  very  masterpiece  of  the  World 's  Litera- 
ture, called  Shakespeare's  Tragedies! 

VIII.  My  reader,  I  hope,  still  feels  prompted  to 
propound  along  with  myself  one  question  more: 
Was  it  this  Dark  Lady  (call  her  Mary  Fitton  if  you 
wish)  who  started  in  Shakespeare's  soul-life  the 
foregoing  penitential  turn  which  we  feel  in  every 
one  of  his  Tragi-comedies  ?  Did  her  final  trans- 
formation, or  conversion  it  may  be  called,  take  hold 
of  the  poet  too,  over  whom  she  held  such  magic 
sway  of  imparting  herself  good  and  bad,  joyful 
and  joyless,  comic  and  tragic?  Is  she  really  the 
underlying  influence  which  propels  him  into  this 


TBAGI-C0MEDIE8  511 

Third  Period  of  his  total  Life-drama,  performing 
essentially  the  same  function  she  performs  appar- 
ently in  the  two  previous  Periods  ?  No  documented 
statement  to  that  effect,  no  direct  proof  is  to  be 
found,  still  some  hintful  pointers  scattered  through 
several  Sonnets  we  may  stop  and  look  at,  seeking  to 
feel  if  not  to  decipher  their  somewhat  veiled  sug- 
gestion. 

Already  we  have  noticed  the  poet's  absolute  rec- 
ognition of  the  Dark  Lady  as  the  source  of  his  in- 
spiration: for  instance  (No.  38) 

How  can  my  Muse  want  subject  to  invent 
While  thou  dost  breathe  that  pour'st  into  my 

verse 
Thine  own  sweet  argument,  too  excellent 
For  every  vulgar  paper  to  rehearse? 
O  give  thyself  the  thanks  if  aught  in  me 
Worthy  perusal  stand  against  thy  sight, 
For  who 's  so  dumb  that  cannot  write  to  thee 
When  thou  thyself  dost  give  invention  light. 
Be  thou  the  tenth  Muse — ten  times  more  in  worth 
Than  those  old  nine.     .     .     . 

I  am  aware  that  the  vast  majority  of  commentators 
maintain  that  the  above  lines  were  addressed  to 
some  man.  But  there  is  nothing  in  the  Sonnet  from 
which  any  inference  of  the  sort  can  be  drawn.  Im- 
possible! Such  a  view  taints  their  poetic  flavor 
and  kills  their  meaning  for  the  poet's  life.  And 
in  the  next  Sonnet  (No.  39)  he  stresses  with  an  ex- 
clamation the  source  of  his  song : 


512  SHAKESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

0,  how  thy  worth  with  manners  may  I  sing 
When  thou  art  all  the  better  part  of  me ! 

In  fact  he  more  than  intimates  that  sometimes  the 
sight  of  her  is  too  powerful,  the  inspiration  of  her 
presence  too  overwhelming  so  that  it  paralyzes  his 
pen  (No.  103)  : 

0  blame  me  not,  if  I  no  more  can  write ! 
Look  in  your  glass,  and  there  appears  a  face 
That  overgoes  my  blunt  invention  quite 
Dulling  my  lines  and  doing  me  disgrace. 

And  thus  we  find  confessed  in  many  a  Sonnet  the 
poet's  utter  infatuation  with  the  Dark  Lady.  Let 
her  be  as  devilish  as  she  may,  he  cannot  break  loose 
from  her  charm  as  she  clutches  him  fast  by  his  very 
heart  strings,  revelling  in  her  mastery,  yea  in  her 
tyranny  over  him,  and  finding  her  demonic  joy,  as 
he  more  than  once  complains,  in  the  love-tortures 
of  her  writhing  yet  helpless  victim. 

But  there  is  another  side.  That  Dark  Lady  was 
herself  a  genius  in  her  way;  she  had  her  tran- 
scendent gift,  the  gift  for  exciting  inspiration, 
since,  if  we  may  credit  the  confessor  himself,  she 
possessed  the  genius  to  inspire  the  loftiest  flights 
of  the  widest-winged  poetic  imagination  that  the 
world  has  yet  seen.  She  was  not  beautiful ;  indeed 
her  own  raptured  idealizer  stresses  not  only  her 
homeliness  but  her  faithlessness.  Still  hers  was 
the  ever-welling  fountain  of  which  Shakespeare 
needed   to   drink   in   order  to   rouse   his   creative 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  513 

energy  to  its  uttermost  excellence.  Then  another 
peculiar  quality  of  hers  we  catch  up  from  these 
Sonnets:  her  marvelous  power  of  metamorphosis, 
spiritual  and  physical.  She  could  be  the  lovely, 
lordly,  faithful  Portia,  and  then  she  became  a  fe- 
male Mephistopheles  who  made  her  lover  Shake- 
speare's heart  and  mind  tragic,  and  therewith  hu- 
man nature  itself. 

But  now  we  return  to  the  last  metamorphosis  of 
the  Dark  Lady,  her  repentance  and  soulful  recov- 
ery, conjectural  indeed,  but  certainly  possible,  yea, 
quite  likely  in  her  spirit's  evolution,  as  we  may 
note  in  the  case  of  thousands  of  reformed  trans- 
gressors. Did  she  then  lead  the  love-leashed  poet 
along  with  herself  into  her  present  final  transform- 
ation? Was  she  again  the  pivot  of  this  fresh  turn 
of  his  spirit's  renewal  through  the  love  of  woman, 
which  we  have  seen  to  be  the  ultimate  motive  power 
of  his  creativity  throughout  his  entire  career? 

In  a  number  of  Sonnets  we  find  hints  of  some 
profound  and  lasting  separation  which  tears  the 
heart  of  the  poet  and  drives  him  to  a  deep-toned 
melancholy  of  retrospection.  Some  such  note  is 
struck  in  No.  36: 

Let  me  confess  that  we  two  must  be  twain, 
Although  our  undivided  loves  are  one ; 
So  shall  those  blots  that  do  with  me  remain, 
"Without  thy  help,  by  me  be  borne  alone. 

Evidently  the  time  has  come  for  a  permanent  and 
complete  severance  of  the  most  intimate  ties  of  the 


514  SHAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DEAMA 

soul;  henceforth  they  must  live  asunder,  though 
their  loves  cannot  be  parted  by  any  resolved,  outer 
separation : 

In  our  two  loves  there  is  but  one  respect, 
Though  in  our  lives  a  separable  spite. 

Thus  the  poet  must  now  go  on  alone,  ''without  thy 
help" — another  indication  of  her  place  in  his 
spirit 's  activity.  A  further  yet  quite  opposite  stage 
in  the  parting  of  the  two  lovers  seems  suggested  in 
No.  39: 

Even  for  this  (my  song)  let  us  divided  live, 
And  our  dear  love  lose  name  of  single  one. 
That  by  this  separation  I  may  give 
That  due  to  thee  which  thou  deserv'st  alone. 

Here  seems  to  be  couched  some  hint  of  the  new  sort 
of  poetry  or  drama  which  he  is  writing,  and  which 
she,  the  newly  transformed  Dark  Lady,  still  in- 
spires, being  ''that  due  to  thee"  from  me  "which 
thou  deserv'st  alone".  If  this  be  the  case,  then 
the  poet  himself  declares  her  the  source  of  his  last 
inspiration  to  write.  So  we  dare  construe  these 
two  Sonnets  quite  against  all  authority.  Though 
we  would  avoid  verbal  interpretation,  we  may  state 
that  one  misunderstood  word  (him)  in  the  last 
line  of  this  Sonnet  (No.  39)  has  been  a  stumbling 
block :  ' '  By  praising  him  here  who  doth  hence  re- 
main. ' '  Him  means  in  this  connection  not  some  in- 
dividual   (Southampton,  Pembroke,  etc.),  but,  as 


TBAGI-COMEDIES  515 

the  context  shows,  is  general  in  its  allusion  signify- 
ing anyone,  or  whomever. 

And  now  comes  a  Sonnet  composed  in  a  still  dif- 
ferent stage  or  mood  of  this  last  Period.  It  shows 
the  poet  criticising  himself,  intimating  his  falling- 
off  in  style  and  power  from  his  previous  excellence 
(No.  76) : 

Why  is  my  verse  so  barren  of  new  pride, 
So  far  from  variation  or  quick  change? 
Why  with  the  time  do  I  not  glance  aside. 
To  new-found   methods   and   to   compounds 

strange  ? 
Why  write  I  still  all  one,  ever  the  same, 
And  keep  invention  in  a  noted  weed 
That  every  word  doth  almost  tell  my  name, 
Showing  their  birth  and  where  they  did  proceed  ? 
0  know,  sweet  love,  I  always  write  of  you. 
And  you  and  love  are  still  my  argument — 
So  all  my  best  is  dressing  old  words  new, 
Spending  again  what  is  already  spent, 
For  as  the  sun  is  daily  new  and  old 
So  is  my  love  still  telling  what  is  told. 

There  is  no  gainsaying  the  fact  that  the  poet  is 
here  looking  back  at  his  work  and  giving  his  view  of 
its  present  style  and  of  himself.  The  central  point 
which  he  emphasizes  is  that  he  reproduces  his  old 
art-form,  Comedy,  keeping  his  **  invention  in  a 
noted  weed".  This  means,  as  we  construe  it,  that 
he  has  returned  to  his  former  comic  ** method" 


516  SHAKE8PE ABE'S    LIFE-DBAMA 

(his  First  Period)  in  these  recent  Tragi-comedies. 
Moreover  he  declares  his  theme  to  be  eternally  the 
same :  * '  sweet  love,  I  always  write  of  you ' ',  where- 
upon follows  that  very  suggestive  acknowledgment : 
**you  and  love  are  still  my  argument".  That  is, 
single-love  he  transmutes  and  idealizes  now  through 
his  poetry  to  all-love ;  his  individual  passion  is  chas- 
tened and  purified  to  universal  love  (say  in  Her- 
mione).  Hence  "let  our  dear  love  lose  name  of 
single  one"  in  this  new  transfiguration.  Un- 
doubtedly he  repeats  himself ;  so  does  the  Sun,  be- 
ing ''daily  new  and  old". 

Thus  Shakespeare  indicates  his  return  to  his 
earlier  plays,  reconciled  and  happy-ending,  out  of 
his  tragic  time.  This  Sonnet  was  doubtless  one  of 
the  poet's  last,  written  possibly  in  1609,  not  long 
before  the  publication  of  his  book  of  Sonnets.  It 
shows  that  he  was  already  writing  in  his  new  mood, 
as  he  here  sets  down  in  his  diary  the  pivotal  experi- 
ence which  starts  and  animates  his  whole  Third 
Period. 

A  reflection  derived  from  World-Literature  can- 
not help  intruding  itself  into  the  foregoing  con- 
clusion. Dante  has  in  like  manner  made  the  woman 
whom  he  loves  his  deliverer,  his  mediator,  his 
spirit's  prompter  and  guide  through  Hell  to 
Heaven.  But  Beatrice  was  innocent ;  so  we  turn  to 
Goethe's  Margaret,  the  fallen  and  the  risen  soul 
through  love,  who  thereby  helps  redeem  her  lover, 
Faust,  and  of  whom  the  Chorus  chants  the  final 
loftiest  note  of  the  poem : 


TRAGICOMEDIES  517 

Das  Ewig-Weibliche 
Zieht  Tins  hinan. 

"Which  has  been  translated:  ''The  Woman-Soul 
(or  the  Ever- Womanly)  draweth  us  onward  and 
upward." 

On  April  23,  1616,  Shakespeare  passed  away  in 
his  mansion  of  New  Place,  being  just  fifty-two 
years  old,  his  death-day  falling  upon  his  birth-day. 
He  was  buried  in  the  Stratford  Church,  and  he 
must  have  taken  good  care  to  possess  the  most  con- 
spicuous tomb  in  the  town.  Lasting  if  not  everlast- 
ing he  wished  his  final  resting-place  to  endure,  for 
some  such  motive  breathes  out  of  the  inscription  on 
his  grave,  probably  the  last  poetry  our  poet  ever 
wrote : 

Good  friend,  for  Jesus  ^  sake  forbear 
To  dig  the  dust  enclosed  here ; 
Blest  be  the  man  that  spares  these  stones, 
And  cursed  be  he  that  moves  my  bones. 

Did  he  have  some  presentiment  that  his  sepulchre 
would  be  eternal,  and  that  he,  ''the  heir  of  all 
eternity",  should  seek  to  make  his  tomb  eternal,  a 
kind  of  Mecca  for  the  whole  English-speaking 
world?  Certainly  he  was  not  indifferent  to  the  fu- 
ture estate  of  his  achievement  and  of  his  reputation. 
If  the  foregoing  lines  closed  his  poetical  career,  we 
shall  cite  a  very  early  passage  on  the  same  theme 


518  SHAEESPE ABE'S    LIFE-DEAMA. 

which  he  may  have  intoned  as  a  sort  of  prelude  to 
his  Life-drama  (in  Love's  Labor's  Lost): 

Let  fame,  that  all  hunt  after  in  their  lives, 
Live  registered  upon  our  brazen  tombs, 
And  then  grace  us  in  the  disgrace  of  death. 
When  spite  of  cormorant  devouring  Time, 
The  endeavor  of  this  present  breath  may  buy 
That  honor  which  shall  bate  his  scythe's  keen 

edge 
And  make  us  heirs  of  all  eternity. 


INDEX 


Aeschylus,  28,    131,    150-2, 

217,  442 
All's  Well  that  Ends  Well, 

84,  383,  386-7 
Amyot,  Jacques,  464 
Angelo,  Michael,  231 
Antony  and  Cleopatra,  113, 

129,  283,  285,  448-9,  468, 

508-9 
Ariosto,  217 
Arthur,  King,  and  Knights 

of  the  Round  Table,  37, 

39,  218,  405-6 
As  You  Like  It,  15,  40,  69, 

121,  383-4,  460,  487 

Bacon,  Francis,  50,  413 
Bandello,  287 

Barnfield,  Richard,  223,  246 
Bible,  the,  44,  57,  368 
Bibles,    the   Literary,    443, 

490 
Bion,  222 
Boar's   Head   Tavern,   406, 

424 
Boccaccio,  212 
Bodleian  Library,  61 
Boiardo,  217 
Bosworth  Field,  36 
Brooke,  Arthur,  287-9,  291 
Bruno,  Giordano,  328 
Burbage,     Richard,     112-3, 

118,  199 

Calderon,  442 
Camden,  William,  28 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  248 
Carter,  Rev.  Xhos.,  58 
Catherine,  Queen,  36 


Cervantes,  323 

Chapman,  George,  372,  394 

Chaucer,  211,  226,  442 

Chettle,  Henry,  148 

Cicero,  54 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  35,  164 

Comedy  of  Errors,  35,  82-3, 

113,  134,  268,  274,  292-4, 

297-8,  311,  315,  318,  409 
Condell,    Henry,    123,    127, 

154,  483 
Corinna  of  Tanagra,  239 
Coriolanus,    45,    47,    448-9, 

475 
Craik,  Prof.  G.  L.,  12 
Cymbeline,    36,    277,    475, 

481-3,  487 

Dante,  38,  76,  212,  408,  443, 

490,  516 
Dark  Lady,  the  (Mary  Fit- 
ton),  34,  56,  83,  85,  215, 
266,  286,  290-1,  315,  317, 
326,    330,    416,    429,    436, 
438-9,  467-8,  470,  473,  491, 
496-7,  499,  500-1,  503,  505, 
507-8,  510-14 
D'Avenant,  Sir  Wm.,  112 
Digges,  Leonard,  126,  200 
Drake,  Sir  Francis,  103 

Essex,  second  Earl  of,  249, 
399,  461-2 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  36,  44, 
99,  100,  103,  142,  147,  159, 
162-3,  169-70,  204,  210-11, 
249,  272,  323,  327,  334-5. 
337-9,  351-2,  365,  380,  393, 
396-7,  399,  461,  474,  501-2 

(519) 


520 


SHAKESPE ABE'S   LIFE-DBAMA 


Elze,  Friedrich  K.,  103 
Emerson,     Ralph     Waldo, 
247-8,  252-3,  381 

Fairfax,  Edward,  212 
Field,    Richard,    111,    221, 

226 
Fitton,    Mary    (the    "dark 

laay"),    286,    437,    501-4, 

507-10 
Florio,  Giovanni,  212,  321 
Folio,  the  First,  122-30,  154, 

160-1,  164,  199,   267,  270, 

283,    294,    307,    332,    336, 

356,  375,  475,  482-3 
Freiligrath,  Ferdinand  von, 

210 
Purness,  Dr.  H.  H.,  15 

Globe  Theatre,  129,  284, 
462-3 

Goethe,  48,  55,  58.  80,  151-2, 
210,  214,  220,  223,  231, 
246,  248,  289,  290,  312, 
369,  410,  432,  443,  516 

Golding,  Arthur,  49,  56-7 

Gottfried  von  Strassburg, 
38 

Greene,  Robert,  118,  146-8, 
156,  366,  394 

Grosart,  249 

Hallam,  Henry,  271 

Halliwell-Phillips,  James 
O.,  95 

Hamlet,  44,  70,  74,  112, 
124-5,  131,  134,  137,  140, 
172-3,  186,  193,  197,  210, 
232,  249,  262,  267,  271-2, 
279,  280,  298,  330,  376, 
385,  422-3,  432,  448-9,  456, 
469-71,  475-7,  500,  504 

Hathaway,  Anne,  77-8,  81-7, 
91,  222,  286,  301-2,  340, 
359,  403 


Heminge,    John,    123,    127, 

154,  483 
Henry  IV,  King,  327,  349, 

351,  371,  399,  400-2,  405, 

409 
Henry  IV,  first  part,  32,  94, 

184,    356,    379,    380,    389, 

397,  417 
Henry  IV,  second  part,  32, 

97,  184,  356,  379,  380,  389, 

406 
Henry    V,    King,    36,    371, 

390-1,  402,  412-17,  419-21, 

423-5,  434-5 
Henry  V,  31,  39,  163,  356, 

379,  389,  411-25,  462-3 
Henry     VI,     King,     152-3, 

158-61,     163,     167-8,    173, 

179-80,  390-1,  420-1,  425 
Henry  VI,  first  part,  147-8, 

154-5,   162,   168,  173,  251, 

367 
Henry     VI,     second    part, 

154-5,     157,     163,     167-8, 

171,  175 
Henry  VI,  third  part,  115, 

142,   148,   154-5,   157,  178, 

181,  184,  347 
Henry  VI,  Trilogy  of,  185- 

8,  191,  266,  280,  336,  338, 

390-7,  425 
Henry  VII,  King,  33,  36 
Henry  VIII,  King,  44 
Henry  VIII,  133,  335,  483 
Herndon,  Wm.  H.,  67 
Herodotus,  251 
Hesiod,  28 

Holinshed,  349,  403;  464 
Homer,  28,  60,  216-7,  238-9, 

372,  432,  443 
Horace,  54,  276 
Hunt,    Simon,   59,   62,   228, 

297,  321 

James  I,  King,  57,  352,  461 
Jenkins,  Thomas,  62,  321-2 


INDEX 


521 


Jonson,  Ben,  29,  54,  126, 
129,  189,  200,  274,  373, 
394 

Julius  Caesar,  129,  448-9, 
508 

Keats,  John,  369 

King  John,   44-5,  114,   268, 

333-7,  339,  341,  343-5,  371 
King  Lear,  18,  45,  112.  271. 

376,    419,    445,    448,    450. 

456.  461.  469,  496 
Knight,  Charles.  156 
Kyd,    Thomas,    118,    145-6, 

279,  366,  394 

La  Mothe,  323 
Lancastrian  Tetralogy,  392 
Lancastrian  Triology,  356, 

379,  389,  390-3,  396-7,  402, 

406,  408,  411,  413-4,  416, 

420,  434,  461 
Lee,    Sir    Sidney,    16,    32, 

213-4,  232,  246,  458 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  67-8,  72, 

322 
Livy,  226 

Lodge,  Thomas,  146,  156 
Lover^s  Complaint,  A,  218, 

229,  231,  233,  330 
Love's  Labor's  Lost,  55,  84, 

261,  268,  274,  292-3,  317-8, 

328-9,  331,  487,  501,  518 
Lucrece,  111,  127,  212,  218, 

224-7,  232-3 
Lucy,  Sir  Thomas,  96-7 
Lyly,  John,  118,  146-7 

Macaulay ,  Thomas  B.,  327 
Macbeth,     129,     194,     198, 

448-9,  456,  469 
Mackay,  Herbert,  30 
Malone,  Edmund,  112,  128, 

146,  244 
Malory,  Sir  Thomas,  405 


Margaret,  Queen,  167-72, 
180,  192,  395,  425 

Marlowe,  Christopher,  117- 
8,  143,  145-7,  149-52,  156, 
158,  163-4,  166-8,  170, 
181-7,  189-91,  199,  205, 
209-10,  214-6,  223-4,  229, 
243-4,  255,  258,  275,  336, 
341,  344,  366-74,  391,  393- 
5,  407,  416,  430,  453 

Marston,  John,  283,  394 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  142, 
170,  461,  474 

Measure  for  Measure,  44, 
86,  241,  325,  481,  487 

Merchant  of  Venice,  10, 
284,  325,  378-9,  388 

Meres,  Francis,  54,  215, 
223,  294,  307 

Mermaid  Tavern,  69 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor, 
31,  62,  97,  184,  347,  349. 
379-81 

Middleton,  Thomas,  394 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream, 
57,  70,  103,  242,  377,  465, 
487 

Milton,  217,  442 

Mountjoy,       Christopher, 
454-5,  457,  464 

Much  Ado  about  Nothing, 
322,  383,  385 

Nash,  Thomas,  146,  156, 
366 

Othello,   45,    112,   325,   445, 

448,  450,  456,  482 
Ovid,    49,    54-7,    60-1,    119, 

219,  221-3,  226,  276-7,  313 

332 

Passionate  Pilgrim,  243-5 
Peele,     George,     146,     156, 

366,  394 
Pembroke,    third   Earl   of, 

439,  502,  504,  506,  514 


522 


SEAEIJSPEAEE'S   LIFE-DBAMA. 


Pericles,  483 

Petrarch,  212 

Phoenix    and    the    Turtle, 

The,  246-7,  249-51.  253 
Pindar  of  Thebes,  239 
Plato,  250,  328,  428 
Plautus,  54,  70,  297 
Plutarch,  96,  464-6,  508 
Porto,  Luigi  da,  288 
Puritanism    and   Puritans, 

44,  58,  70,  106-7,  174,  197, 

215,  368,  381-3 

Rabelais,  324,  455 
Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  104 
Ravenscroft,  Edward,  271 
Richard  II,  King,  333,  345- 

6,  349-52,    372,    409,    421, 
462 

Richard  II,  268,  333-4,  344- 

7,  351,    392-3,    398,    418. 
462,  477 

Richard  III,  King,  36,  142, 
172,  180-4,  186,  189,  191-8, 
200-2,  207,  228,  336,  347, 
367,  370-1 

Richard  III,  170,  172,  180, 
182,  185,  187-8,  190,  196-9, 
206-7,  266,  274,  346,  367, 
376 

Romeo  and  Juliet,  72,  223, 
242,  249,  268-70,  281-3, 
286-90,  305,  330,  376,  475, 
509 

Rowe,  Nicholas,  96-7 

St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  457 
Sappho,  239 
Schiller.  151,  369 
Seneca,  54,  70,  269 
Shakespeare,  John,  25,  39- 

42,  47,  67,  91,  297,  362 
Shakespeare,  Mary  Arden, 

25,  40-1,  43-4,  47,  80,  297, 

303,  340,  359 


Shakespearian  Drama 
(The) — Comedies.  Com- 
mentary by  Dr.  Denton 
J.  Snider,  389 

Shakespearopolis,  24,  139 

Sonnets,  16,  19,  20,  98,  128, 
130,  215,  237,  240,  250, 
253,  258-66,  291,  315,  326, 
371-4,  423,  426-41,  468, 
473,  478,  488-90,  497,  503, 
505-8,  510-16 

Southampton,  third  Earl 
of,  212,  219,  225,  235, 
399,  439-40,  461-2,  506, 
514 

Spenser,  Edmund,  28-9, 
200,  213,  220 

Spiess,  Johann,  184 

Straparola,  380 

Tacitus,  466 

Taming  of  the  Shrew,  82, 

377-8 
Tasso,  217,  220 
Taylor,  Bayard,  246 
Tempest,    The,    49,   76,   87, 

104,    178,    197,    211,    242, 

251,    286,    481,    483,    487, 

497 
Tennyson,  38,  406 
Terence,  54 
Theobald,  Lewis,  325 
Theocritus,  222 
Thorpe,  Thomas,  231,  233, 

259 
Timon  of  Athens,  448,  450, 

469 
Tintoretto,  326 
Titian,  326 
Titus    Adronicus,    48,    146, 

268-76,    278-81,    290,    418, 

475 
Troilus  and  Cressida,  283, 

448-50,  475 
Tyler,    Thomas,    437,    503, 

507 


INDEX 


523 


Tudor,  Owen,  36 

Twelfth  Night,  18,  86,  379, 
381,  460,  485 

Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona, 
268,  277,  292-3,  305,  311, 
315,  317-8,  335,  487 

Venus  and  Adonis,  72,  111, 
127,  212,  218-27,  233,  244- 
5,  286,  289,  459 

Virgil,  54,  56,  217,  227,  276 

Voltaire,  166 


Wagner,  Richard,  38 

Wallace,  Prof.  Chas.  Wil- 
liam, 454,  456,  458,  463 

White,  Richard  Grant,  319, 
342    353 

Whitman,  Walt,  152,  413 

Winter's  Tale,  419,  481-3, 
485,  487 

Wright,  W.  A.,  171 

Yorkian  Tetralogy,  204, 
333-4,  330 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY— TEL.  NO.  642^405 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


NOV  ^4^969  0^ 

j^fci^iw. . 

« 

NOV  9    19' 

;9 

-r-i-n    1      \'iV 

,87 

ftB  1     *^' 

JUL  08 1989 

*^/. 

% 

'^v. 

5     u-    s 

"*«„ 

>        CO      '-' 

if 

-;         ^r-i          CJ 

OTDISGJ|\N29'90 

or       n         ^'- 

^ 

LD21A-60m-6,'69 
(J9096sl0)476-A-32 

General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 

VB  1/494 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


IIIIIDI 

C00S3113M3 


M170818 


b'lo 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  UBRARY 


